A new painting and a new brush

I splurged on a Jackson’s Kolinsky Tajmyr Sable # 12 from Jackson’s Art Supplies and couldn’t wait to try it out. This watercolor was done entirely with that brush, which is not the way I usually work, but I wanted to see what it could do in terms of washes, dry-brush, detail, etc. One painting isn’t enough to do a proper review, but the preliminary results are certainly encouraging. It holds a copious amount of water and paint, and it comes to a razor sharp point, which is what you’d expect from a kolinsky sable. It’s also incredibly soft, but has a nice spring to it. In the right hands, this brush can dance…

As always when breaking in a new brush, it can be a little awkward at first: you two have to get to know one another. I’ve been using worn out brushes with very blunt tips for a long time, so the sharpness of this brush often surprised me. Its softness meant that I had to exert a bit more pressure than I’m used to doing with my synthetic round workhorse brush, but that’s a matter of getting the hang of it. You could easily get wonderful dry-brush effects with this brush by just scraping it across the paper. I’ll let you know how my tajmyr sable and I get along after I’ve done a few more paintings 🙂

The example here is another scene from Bielefeld. Nothing grand, but I like the feel of a city with people walking around on an ordinary day. So much of life is like that… I cropped out a bit on the right side, which didn’t quite work, so this measures about 25×30 cm.