My current paint brushes had got to that stage where the tips are starting to go and were in need of replacing but the dilemma was what to replace them with. For the last 18 months or so I’ve been using some Games and Gears brushes and they have been very nice. But when it came to replacing them they are only available as a full set at around £30 for six brushes but I only really needed to replace four of them so I was a bit hesitant and decided to have a bit of look around to see what else was available. There were the obvious choses of Windsor and Newton series 7, Games Workshop or Rosemary and Co all coming in at about the same price. Then I saw something on Twitter that caught my eye. Some unusual looking brushes from a company that I had never heard of before, WarColours. So I decided to have a look and see what they had to offer.
The thing here that caught my eye was that they seem much fatter than a normal brush which the information on the web sites says ‘allows for closer grip and therefore higher control and stability’. Which sounded interesting and they did look comfortable. The other thing that caught my eye was they were available individually which was a big plus. So I decided to give them a go and ordered there full set of five brushes. Now I know that sounds a bit hypocritical having said I didn’t’ go with Games and Gears again because I could only get them as a set and here I am getting a set from somewhere else. But the difference was a set from here was only €17 which is about half the price so in my mind worth a punt.
For those of you who are interested here are some more details for the brushes taken from the website:
- 100% natural wood handle
- 100% kolinsky hair
- Short aluminium ferrule
Brush Sizes:
- Size – 000 has a hair length of 3.0mm
- Size – 00 has a hair length of 5.0mm
- Size – 0 has a hair length of 7.0mm
- Size – 1 has a hair length of 9.0mm
- Size – 2 has a hair length of 11.0mm
Ordering and Delivery:
So once I’d decided to give these brushes a go the ordering process was really straight forward. I simply added the items to my cart and then used ‘PayPal’ to check out. Nice and straight forward with no need to register first or anything like that. To give you some idea of time scale here I ordered the brushes on a Wednesday afternoon and they arrived the following Tuesday. So that was just under a week for international post, which I don’t think is bad at all.
The brushes were packaged in individual plastic tubes which were in turn packaged in a reasonably sturdy cardboard tube with some soft paper to stop them rattling around. When they arrived the outer packaging had a few scuffs and dings but everything inside was well protected.
The Brushes:
The brushes themselves are very different to any other brushes I’ve used, well as different as a stick with some bristles at one end can be. The wooden handles are fatter than most brushes and the ferrule is much shorter. Warcolours says this means you have much more control over the brush which makes sense but might be quite hard to quantify. The length of the hair on the brushes also seems quite unusual in that on other brushes I’ve used a 1 from one source looks like a 1 from somewhere else. These don’t seem to follow that convent. The 000 is an absolutely minute brush and on initial look I’m not sure what I would actually use it for. Whereas the 2 seems like a very large brush.
The quality of the brushes dose seem to be high right. From the moment you open up the packaging you feel like you are getting a quality product with each brush coming in its own plastic tube. When you take the brushes out they each another plastic section to protect the ferrule and hair. The plain wooden handles feel nice in the hand and in general I prefer this more natural look. Again it’s something I can’t quantify but just looking at the brushes makes me want to pick them up and use them.
What are they like to use:
Ok then I wrote the first part of this review when the brushes first arrived. Since then I’ve had a couple of week to use the brushes and to get a real feel for them. So what do I think of them? Well to be perfectly honest I’m not overly impressed. I don’t know how much of this is down to expectations and how much down to the brushes themselves but I’ll try and break it down.
First of all whilst I find them very comfortable to use they are a lot wider than any other brushes I have use and the ferrule is much shorter. On occasion this this has meant that whilst working on some tricky to reach details I couldn’t actually see what I was painting. Simply moving the mini a little bit resolves this but I found it quite interesting that it’ kept happening. I think this is just down to the fact that over time we find a way to do things and then the repletion makes it second nature but changing brushes had an impact on this. Like I say nothing that can’t be resolved but something to think about.
On first inspection the brushes seem to be really well made but I’ve fund that on the 0, 1 and 2 sizes they tend ‘split’ when in use. I’ve cleaned and conditioned them just in case it was something to do with them being new but it doesn’t’ seem to have made any difference. Obviously the one thing that you really need with a brush is a single point so this is an issue that you can’t ignore.
One thing that was a nice surprise was how useful the 000 brush has been. This is an absolutely tiny brush but I’ve found that it is great for painting eyes. I know that any brush with a good point can be used for this but I’ll give credit where credit is due and this one works really well for me. Other than that the other brushes are quite nice but nothing special.
So overall I think I would have to say that they have been something of a disappointment. I have seen other reviews of these brushes where people have had no problems with them at all so it may be that I got couple of bad examples. But from my experience I couldn’t really recommend them as a set. Whilst the price is very competitive if they don’t work it’s not a good deal. Having said that if you are looking for a single brush for doing very small details like eyes then I can highly recommend the 000.
Hope that was useful for you all. I’ll try and do more reviews going forward but they will be a bit hit and miss because they are only done when I purchase something new. In the meantime feel free to leave any comments about this review or your own experiences of these brushes below.
