Drybrushing Test

Recently, I've decided to up my drybrushing game. I've been painting since 2002 and back in the day we were told to use a shitty old brush to do our drybrushing after we walked up hill both ways in the snow. It worked fine and we liked it mostly because we had no other option. I assume some mad lad grabbed a makeup brush after watching their girlfriend drybrush their face. I also assume that people have been grabbing the expensive artist brushes but I've never heard of it. Only recently, have there been specialized dry brushes from GW and Armypainter. 

I grabbed a bunch of these different brushes and went wild on some fire that I need to paint for D&D. Here are the results!

1. Large ELF eyeshadow brush $5: 

Bristles are very soft and they soak up paint. That makes for a very wet drybrush. This is probably because makeup powder is much more dry than paint. This smears paint rather than drybrushing. I tried to get as much paint as I could off but it held a lot. This would almost be good for getting down a good base coat rather than drybrushing. Very lite strokes worked ok after a while (you can see that towards the base of the flame). Dry compound paints may work better but I would not use these on anything where a lite drybrush is needed. It was also really hard to clean and the ferrule was very loose. 

2. Medium Armypainter drybrush $30 for a 3 pack: 

Very soft bristles that hold a lot of paint but release it evenly. It was a little hard to get the paint OFF of the
brush. This makes sense that they come in a 3 pack of various sizes so you can pick the size of the brush for the project. For such a small detailed area, I probably should have used the smaller brush. The largest brush would be good for wide flat areas like vehicles and giant wings. The ferrule is tight as a drum. Really good quality. The shorter handle lets you do short and fast strokes. The largest size of these is a little hard to stick in a pot of paint. 

3. Shitty old brush $10 for a pack of 10: 

This brush is probably 4-5 years old and was a large area brush before retiring into a drybrush. This is the kind of brush I've used since the beginning. The bristles of various lengths and crazy directions pick up details pretty well. Works on small areas. Works on marge areas. Does not really hold a lot of paint but it lets that paint our very evenly. Pretty easy to clean. 

4. GW large drybrush $12: 

I can understand how GW designed this. They probably looked at what art supplies people were using and punched it up a notch. The bristles are pretty soft and shockingly long. It holds an impressive amount of paint and lets it out evenly. The square head allows you to rotate to get the best shape for what you are using. It cleans up pretty nice and the ferrule is solid. 

The best were the Armypainter brushes and the GW brush. Turns out a specialized tool is worth it over a shitty one or a cheaper alternative. The GW large drybrush is probably the best all rounder but the Armypainter brushes win out due to the various sizes. I get why they come in a three pack now because they are so specialized that one brush would not work for all situations. Both of the specialty brushes are about the same in cost per brush but the $30 price tag probably scares off a lot of people from the three pack of Armypainter brushes. 

The take away is, yes a shitty old brush will work just fine. It puts paint where you want and is cheap. The specialist brushes are worth it. Take care of them and they will last you a decade. That's a good investment and why work harder than you have to with an inferior tool when you can use the right tool for the right job. Last place are the makeup brushes. This is like using a hammer when a wrench will do. I am sure they are great at smearing colored powder on girl's faces but they stink at moving paint properly. Bottom tier.