Those of you who prefer a textured brush stroke are no doubt already familiar with Escoda's Clásico line of white chungking hog bristle brushes. Traditionally used for oil painting, hog bristle has the strength and durability required to handle heavy body acrylics as well. The aptly-named Clásico brushes give a classic, painterly brush stroke that leaves no doubt about an artwork's medium.
Escoda's Clásico brushes use only the finest hog bristle hairs from Chongqing, China. Renowned worldwide for their quality, hog's hairs from this region are naturally stiff, conferring their own personality into an artist's finished work. Unlike Escoda's Natural line, however, the bristles are bleach-treated, giving them a sophisticated, off-white colour.
Our most popular brush fibre at KROMA, Escoda's Clásico line comes in a number of different brush heads and handle lengths appropriate for different painting techniques. What follows is a run-down of each of the brushes we carry from this line.
Flat Brushes
KROMA carries three flat brushes in the Clásico line: a mottler, a short-bristle mottler, and an overgrainer. These brushes have a short, wide handle typical of the style.
Beloved by painters of all stripes, the classic mottler brush packs a major punch in terms of usefulness. While it is recommended generally for large-scale washes and laying down base layers, some artists will use a mottler for pretty much everything - taking advantage of its long and short sides to create a wide variety of marks. Mottlers also hold a lot of paint, making them particularly useful for wet-on-wet techniques with oil paints.
Like a regular mottler, the short-bristle version is pretty versatile and able to hold a lot of paint. While a regular mottler can create broad, expressive strokes, the short-bristle version is more restrained and precise. Because of this, a short-bristle mottler is an ideal brush for colour blocking and other situations where a sharp corner is required.
While an overgrainer might look like a mottler, it doesn't quite have the range of one. Overgrainers are one of those highly specific tools that only really do one thing: in this case, mimicking the effect of hard wood grain. While a soft, synthetic hair might confer a straighter stripe, the rough, irregular texture of the Clásico chungking hog's hair makes a natural, unpredictable mark not dissimilar from actual wood grain.
Standard Oil & Acrylic Brushes
For most techniques, these are the brushes that most oil and acrylic painters will work with most often. They have the long handles typical of oil and acrylic brushes, and come in a wide size range, from 3/0 (about 1.5mm) to 32 (about 5cm). They have three distinct brush heads: bright, filbert, and round.
Escoda makes their Clásico bright and filbert long handle brushes in varying bristle lengths as well. The longer the bristle, the more the brush will behave like it has a softer hair. It will also last longer, as chungking hog's hair bristles shorten with use over time.
Bright (regular & long bristle)
Instead of a classic flat brush, Escoda makes what is called a "bright" - a slightly tapered version of a flat. The advantage of the taper is that when the brush is laid flat on the substrate, the bristles do not widen beyond the width of the ferrule. Brights are the ideal brushes to apply wide, thick swaths of paint in short, controlled strokes.
Filbert (regular, long bristle, extra long)
A filbert brush is more versatile than a bright, as it can make very similar marks, but has the added advantage of a pointed tip to aid in detail work. Because of the nature of the chungking hog's hair, the Clásico filberts are not quite as sharply pointed as filberts in other brush series by Escoda. Precise detail work is a a thing best left to softer brushes, but the Clásico filbert still packs a punch in terms of versatility. Like the bright, the long and extra long versions of the filbert will behave a bit more like a softer brush, and will have more longevity as the hairs shorten over time.
Because of the stiff nature of chungking hog's hair, the Clásico round brushes have a rounder point than their softer counterparts. While this disadvantages them in terms of precise detail work, it adds the advantage of creating expressive strokes of varying sizes. Round brushes are exceptionally versatile for this reason. If you buy only one brush, a larger round is probably the way to go because of the variety of mark weights it can produce.
Specialty Brushes
In addition to the standard brushes you might expect to see, Escoda also makes some rarer, specialty brushes in the Clásico line. In fact, some of these brushes aren't available from Escoda in any other hair series.
Extra long handle brushes (filbert & bright)
For those who need some distance from their work, these brushes just make sense. With their 60cm handle (nearly two feet!), these brushes allow muralists and others who work large to step back and see the bigger picture while painting. We've had a number of customers tell us that they have taped their brushes to broomsticks, rulers, and any number of objects to achieve the same effect. Many find that they prefer a brush built specifically for this purpose to a jury-rigged alternative.
KROMA carries a number of fan brushes with different natural and synthetic hairs. Depending on the softness of the hairs involved, these brushes can be useful to achieve different effects. A soft fan brush (like the Versàtil synthetic kolinsky sable) is a powerful tool for colour blending, glazing, and creating ombré effects. A stiffer fan brush, like the Clásico, however, confers a textured stroke that can be useful for creating fluffy clouds, blades of grass, or the illusion of running water.
Stencil brushes are pretty self-explanatory: they are the perfect brush for working with stencils or doing other stippling techniques. Because of the Clásico line's thirst, they can hold quite a lot of paint and make an efficient brush for quickly applying a stippled layer of acrylic to any surface.
From blades of grass to wide swaths of colour, Escoda's Clásico line packs a punch for those hoping to create natural, expressive brushstrokes of any size. Stay tuned for more information on the many Escoda brushes we carry at KROMA.
Happy painting!
