This month I’m doing an DIY “Advent Calendar” where I open and play with one of my own existing art supplies each day in December. I decided to do a tactile approach: I got my partner to wrap 24 items from my art supply cabinet and I chose one at random from a bag.
Today, I drew a Rosemary travel brush. It’s unlabeled, but I believe it’s a R27, or Red Dot Round size 6. I decided not to use it outside as intended because it’s cold out, and instead opted for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and painted with it inside. I chose a Claire Giordano Foundations of Watercolor lesson because it involves painting two smaller-size paintings and I thought a smaller brush would be good.
Verdict: It’s a really nice synthetic sable brush with a good level of spring and firmness. I don’t really use travel brushes in practice, because I hate bringing water cups outside, but this exercise reminded me that I have it and I may as well just use it as a regular brush in my house!
Stray observations: Before I forget, I also want to note what colors I used for these mini-paintings since this was actually a lesson on color. (It probably would have been more apropos to choose a lesson on brushwork, oh well!)
- The top painting uses an unconventional triad of Phthalo Blue Green Shade, Quin Burnt Orange, and Perylene Red. I liked it better before I added white gouache, oh well. You can get really nice sea-greens with PBGS + QBO.
- The bottom painting uses Cobalt Blue, MANS, and Cobalt Violet for the sky. It was difficult to get dark colors for the rocks because I neglected to include any dark/strong colors, so I ended up adding QBO in the front rock, but I wish I hadn’t as the back rock – which only uses the triad colors – has a hazy quality that I like.
You can see from the brushwork on the bottom painting that the paintbrush is more than up to the task of delicate trees and also drybrush!