Review: Wayfarer Mixed Sable Watercolour Travel Brushes by D'Artisan Shoppe

Disclaimer: These brushes are provided by D'Artisan Shoppe for this review.

I'm a big fan of pocket travel watercolour brushes. Compared to normal wooden watercolour brushes, these portable versions are just as good and so much more convenient to artists who paint outdoors.

A few weeks ago, I was sent a set of watercolour brushes by D'Artisan Shoppe to test. These are beautiful travel brushes with solid build quality. They are only sold in sets (of 4, 6, and 8) so you can't buy the brushes individually.

The brushes use a blend of synthetic and sable hair. When I tested them, they were able to reproduce the spring and sharpness of sable brushes. Water carrying capacity is quite good too.

In their collapsed form, these brushes are unfortunately too long to fit into the typical 12 half pan metal watercolour box. If you want a brush to fit into that box, consider the Rosemary, Da Vinci or Escoda travel brushes.

Breather holes at the back. You should always dry your brushes properly when you have the chance instead of relying on such small holes to do the drying (they won't).

The brushes are able to create gradated washes, wet on wet, and flat washes quite nicely.

It's easy to get thin and thick strokes depending on the pressure you apply. The brush is also able to get back to its shape easily.

Before you use the brush for the first time, you should wash off the wax or whatever substance that's used to coat the hair. Just soak the hair in some warm water for a while and wash them afterwards. If you don't wash them properly the first time, the substance on the hair will interfere with the paint to produce tiny concentrated blots. They will make your painted wash look grainy or chalky.

Here's a sketch I painted with the brushes.

The sharp tip was able to help me paint small areas with ease.

Overall, I was really impressed by the quality of the brushes. These brushes with synthetic-sable blend hair but they retain sable hair characteristics quite well. The price of the set is also quite competitive. At the time of this review, it's cheaper compared to Escoda and Da Vinci sable travel brush sets.

The only issue to note is the length of the collapsed form which is too big to fit into small watercolour boxes. But other than that, there really isn't any downsides.

Availability

Check out more details and other reviews of these brushes at https://www.amazon.com/DArtisan-Shoppe/b/?node=15274841011&tag=artprdus…