Why I like Water Brushes

I've been using water brushes for some time, I particularly loved them in the field with a small portable palette, like my little Cotman sketcher box. Alas, I tend to lose them.

On a recent visit to the art shop, I found that Derivan now makes a set of four refillable brush pens. This set is reasonably priced and comes in different tip sizes and a larger barrel capacity. The brushes are made of nylon hairs, one Chisel tip and the other is pointed rounds of three sizes. They are designed for both water and Derivan’s acrylic inks. I decided to add my watercolour ink, diluted about 50% to one of the middle-sized round tips as a worthwhile addition to my sketching stuff. The idea is it could add the mid-tones while I just sketched with a normal black pen. This combination struck me as ideal for getting that first compositional/tonal sketch down quickly. It worked perfectly.

I chose the cyan ink just because I've been using the cyan gel pen which blends in quite well if you want to paint over the top of it. Also, I didn't have any grey watercolour ink on hand. At some future stage, I'll probably try diluted fountain pen ink but I will avoid Indian Inks it's likely to come up the brush tip.

If you want a laugh, read how ChatGPT rewrote this post for Instagram, less the outrageous bit I removed.