FUUMUUI NEEDLE POINT WATERCOLOUR BRUSHES
Today I got a new set of watercolour brushes. They are rather special.
The beautiful box
Such pretty packaging!
The brushes
There are four brushes in the set. These brushes are made in China, and have smooth wooden handles with minimal varnish. So often, the varnish or paint on brush handles cracks off, making the brushes feel unpleasant, look ugly, and often removes the details of manufacturer or size. The ferrules are nickel-plated brass so will not rust.
What is special about these brushes is the business end, the bristles.
They are natural bristle surrounding a long, needle-pointed synthetic core which is quite a bit stiffer than the rest.
What are they for?
The idea is that they are dual purpose, and can be used for regular painting, and for drawing fine lines, like a rigger.
The bulk of the brush acts as a reservoir for the paint or ink, feeding it down through the synthetic needle point, which means that when painting fine lines, you have to recharge the brush much less frequently than you would with a normal brush.
My experiments
After washing them thoroughly in clean water to remove the stiffening protective size (there was quite a lot!), I took my small watercolour sketchbook and proceeded to paint a series of horizontal lines. I chose to use a cheap black watercolour which wasn’t very pigmented, and the lines became increasingly faint as I progressed through the test.
As a control, I chose my recently-acquired ProArte size O brush, and painted my first fine line. I could not even reach the edge of the page.
The Fuumuui brushes were dramatically better. I began with the finest one, size 4, and progressed through the size 10 and 14. I didn’t bother to try to 20 or I’d have been there all day!
Here is the first page.
The second page.
The watercolour did get paler as I progressed with the test. It would probably have been better to use Indian ink. It is hard to do an accurate test with watercolour, as how you load the brush depends on the thickness of the paint and how much you load. With the No. 14 brush, I did discover that if I twisted the brush, I could get more paint to flow.
You can see how different the result is, and how far one loading of paint will go!
I think these brushes will be ideal for my fine outlining work when I do further Islamic art designs.
Experimenting with the entire brush
I made this small sketch of some trees, laying down the colour with the side of the brush to take advantage of the traditional bristles. When this was dry, I used the needle point to add the branches. Dragging the brush down to form the tree trunks, I was able to get a pleasing dry-brushing effect.
You could do a whole painting with just one of these brushes!
