Author: RAVJr

I was picking up some acrylic paint supplies as I am launching a real effort with this medium (I can’t resist trying acrylic on canvas for some upcoming Blue sky + clouds paintings), and I saw a package of wide brushes for the low-low price of $4.99.

Here are the bargain brushes..

I knew there would likely be some shedding of bristles onto the canvas, and so I tried to remove lose fibers before I started painting the canvas with gesso. And yet it was a terrible cascade of fibers in the gesso and I found myself becoming quite the finger-painter as I plucked them out as best I could.

Naively, I imagined that the brush would eventually shed-down to a set of bristles held in place and I’d reach a point of effectiveness with them, and so I began experimenting with actual painting using the same brush.

I soon realized that there was no hope with these brushes and so stopped my futile attempts to remove fibers from the painted canvas — I let it dry and decided I’d photograph the mess and make this blog post.

Behold what low prices sometimes get you…

The next day I bought a brush from a paint store — the kind you’d use to paint the wall of a living room, not an artist’s brush, and oh how well it works!  In one of the instructional videos I later watched, it was mentioned that Bob Ross used such brushes and so there we have it: use what works and throw away the rest.