One Brush – Dozens of Fibres
With all their manufacture done in Nürnberg (Nuremberg), da Vinci Artist Brushes combine German technology with the long brush making traditions of the Defet family.
Many brushes still need to be made by hand: very fine natural and synthetic hairs can only be handled by nimble fingers, and some special shapes need the human touch too. This team is highly skilled – it takes 7 years to become a Master Brushmaker! Just as skilled is the da Vinci team developing sophisticated machines for producing brushes with suitable fibres and in more common shapes. These finely calibrated instruments create the highest quality brushes with a high level of automation, keeping costs very reasonable. Very German!
About a third of da Vinci’s brushes are made by hand – that’s around a million brushes a year!
Natural hair and bristle brushes have been important to painters for centuries, and while
they continue to be an important part of da Vinci’s offer, increasing issues with cost and
availability inspired da Vinci to develop synthetic fibres that would mimic their
characteristics and ensure a steady supply.
A cross-section of Colineo fibres under the microscope, showing the variety needed to mimic natural hair.
In 2026, da Vinci’s first synthetic brush range “Nova” celebrates its 50th Anniversary! Nova
provided an important brush in the 1970s for the emerging acrylic colours (acrylic paint
is very difficult to clean from natural fibres) and remains a popular brush today, with an
updated composition, employing da Vinci’s current advanced fibre technology. While the
more basic brushes still use a single type of filament, the real innovation from da Vinci is
the blending of many different fibre widths, lengths, strengths and structures to imitate
the best qualities of natural hair, and even improve on it.
These unique, individual recipes of fibre have created new brushes for acrylic, oil, inks,
watercolour and gouache painting. They are more versatile, longer lasting, and more
affordable than natural hair. Such finely made tools allow you to perfectly anticipate the
way that your touch can colour a surface.
What do you want from your brush?
To begin choosing the right brush, a good “rule of thumb” is: the stiffer the paint, the stiffer the brush. It follows that the more fluid the paint, the softer the brush you’ll need. Of course, this saying is just a guide, and a brush can be used in many ways to suit each
individual style.
To select more closely, let’s dive a bit deeper into what each of these remarkable da Vinci
Artist Brushes can do. We’ll also check out brush shapes, handle length, and brush care.
The softer the paint, the softer the brush
Working with watercolour, ink, and fluid acrylics requires a brush that will hold a good
amount of fluid, release it in a measured way, and be gentle enough to work over delicate
surfaces. Softer brushes are also used for heavy body acrylic and oilcolour where precise
layering and detail are required.
Genuine Sable and Squirrel
The distinctive gold ferrule of the Series 11 Kolinsky Sable signals the world’s finest quality sable brush.
There is nothing quite like Kolinsky Sable for watercolour painting. It has such control, in
its elasticity, tip, and fluid flow that it remains the ultimate brush for discerning
watercolour painters. Sable can also be used for oilpainting, with Black Sable brushes
ideal for softening, blending, and layering wet-in-wet.
Kazan Squirrel is delightfully soft, with a large fluid capacity making it the best
watercolour wash brush in the past. Its delicacy limits Squirrel to watercolour painting on
smoother paper.
Da Vinci keeps the highest quality Sable and Squirrel tails in a locked vault – they are very
precious resources that command a very high price! For the advanced painter there may
be no substitute for natural hair, however German technology is offering very similar
characteristics in synthetic fibres, often more versatile, longer lasting, and more
affordable.
Casaneo Synthetic Squirrel
The traditional “quill” binding fattens the body of the brush, allowing it to carry more fluid behind the tip.
Soft and floaty, so very thirsty, the Casaneo is the greatest brush for liquid painting
techniques. You can wash large areas of colour, paint lines for several metres before
reloading, and still tick in exact detail.
Casaneo’s unique wavy fibres mimic the delicate, fluid-hungry Kazan squirrel hair
brushes, yet is durable enough for use with inks and liquid acrylic, perfect for watercolour,
and far less expensive. Casaneo comes to an incredibly fine tip that gives precise control,
which is surprising for a brush with such a deliciously floppy feel.
Casaneo’s thirsty fibre and handmade production has really expanded the possibilities for fluid painting.
Its fine, wavy fibre requires hand production, enabling Casaneo to be made into a
wonderful range of shapes, including traditional bound mops, extra-long riggers, and liner
brushes, to suit the increasing demand of fluid painting techniques.
Colineo Synthetic Sable
Colineo Synthetic Sable gives you a precise touch whether using watercolour, acrylic or oilcolours.
With Colineo, it’s all about control: being able to place and push paint just how you want
to, with plenty of fluid behind the precise tip for uninterrupted application, and with the
brush balanced like an extension of your hand.
Made with da Vinci’s new Kolinsky Synthetic Fibre, a blend of over a dozen filaments, the
Colineo performs like a Kolinsky Red Sable brush. Colineo has an exact shaped tip for
fine detail and controlled lines. The Colineo holds a large reservoir behind this tip, feeding
colour to the surface with an even, long-lasting flow. The fibres of the Colineo have the
strength and elasticity of sable – enough to ensure precise application of even heavy body
paint, especially over wet and delicate paint surfaces.
Colineo gives you perfect control of your colour and allows you to place it exactly where you want it.
The light grey handle of the Colineo is made from a special water-resistant wood
composite, featuring the unique da Vinci “shoulders”, and is very finely balanced to give
your hand a beautifully managed tool. Both short and long handles are available in most
shapes.
Colineo is perfect for watercolour, gouache, and fine oilcolour painting, as well as fluid
and soft body acrylic colours.
Cosmotop Spin
The “Spin” is soft and springy, with so many shapes from the extra-long Wash to the needle-pointed Rigger.
Especially suited to liquid and fluid acrylics, inks and detail painting, the Cosmotop Spin
has flex and thirst.
The unique mixture of fine and smooth fibres in different widths and lengths makes these
brushes hold a surprising amount of fluid. This sits behind a fine tip for excellent control,
and the body of the brush gives an incredibly springy response for both lively and studied
paint applications.
Nova – the Original
The strong, silent type – Nova can both provide fine detail and slather the paint on with fun, not fuss.
Not so soft and fine as Cosmotop-Spin, nor so springy as Top Acryl, the Nova series are
well suited to layering and detailing with acrylic and oilcolour. They are surprisingly
durable for such fine brushes, even with thicker consistency paints.
It is not so surprising then, that they have been many artists favourite brush since 1976.
The stiffer the paint, the stiffer the brush
If you’re using heavy body acrylic or oilcolour, you’ll require a brush strong enough to
push the colour across your surface, at least for initial layers. The fibres will need to be
durable enough to work on abrasive surfaces such as canvas, too.
Genuine Hog Bristle
Chungking Bristle holds so much tension that it was originally used as the spring in a
pocket watch. Unlike cheaper hog hair, Chungking Bristle is extra long, and each bristle
is tipped with “flags” which carry the paint. Da Vinci Maestro-2 are made from top quality,
genuine Chungking Bristle interlocked to maintain its shape, even after years of use.
Properly cared for, a Maestro-2 Bristle Brush will keep its shape for years, wearing down but not giving up!
These brushes are strong enough to easily manipulate oilcolour straight from the tube,
pushing it out as thinly or thickly as you desire. Maestro-2 brushes are the workhorse of
oilpainting, yet Chungking Bristle is getting more difficult and expensive to obtain.
Synthetic alternatives offer a better price, and are suitable for use with acrylic colour as
well as oilpaint.
Replicating natural bristle “flags” (left) in this CHUNEO synthetic fibre (right) is difficult, but not impossible.
Chuneo Synthetic Bristle
With super strong, springy fibres that can really push heavy body acrylic and oilcolour
across your canvas, CHUNEO brushes are perfect for initial laying down of paint layers,
blocking in, scumbling and dry brush techniques.
CHUNEO offers a strong brush for robust heavy body acrylic and oilpainting techniques.
CHUNEO are the first synthetic fibre to offer “flagged” tips and a similar tensile strength
to natural Chungking hog bristles. “Flags” are the split ends that carry thicker consistency
paint and create the individual brush lines of colour synonymous with gesture and
movement. CHUNEO improve on natural bristle with the additional benefits of better wet-in-wet control, easier cleaning with acrylic colour, and much cheaper production costs.
CHUNEO are durable enough to handle underpainting and dry brush techniques, yet
responsive enough for delicate layering.
Top Acryl
The special blend of strong yet thirsty fibres make Top Acryl perfect for both pasty and fluid painting.
Painters making the most of acrylic’s versatility, using heavy body tube colour alongside
liquid acrylics, need a brush that performs well with both. Top Acryl does this brilliantly;
with its special strength and colour absorption, it’s the go-to brush for most acrylic
techniques.
Top Acryl has plenty of springy elasticity to push pasty paint, and its special blend of
fibres suck up plenty of fluid for generous liquid colour application. Top Acryl is extremely
durable, made with da Vinci’s interlocking effect to ensure the brush holds its shape to
respond to every nuance, no matter the viscosity.
The long, anthracite handles are balanced for complete control, whether painting close
or at arm’s length. Top Acryl is a must-have for the serious acrylic painter!
Best at the Basics: Student Brushes
All this skill and knowledge is also used in producing wonderful, affordable brushes. Like
all da Vinci brushes, their student series are made in Germany using a simpler selection
of fibres, and are entirely suitable for even seasoned painters.
Fit Hobby
Finely shaped and nicely balanced, Fit Hobby are almost indestructible, and made for all types of paint.
With their distinctive bright green handles, Fit Hobby brushes are robust, with typical
German manufacture ensuring they last longer than many other similar priced brushes.
The main range features a soft synthetic fibre with a clean, sharp shape best suited to
painting with soft and fluid consistency colours. There is also a Fit Hobby synthetic bristle
available for handling stiffer paint and more vigorous techniques.
Forte Basic
The strongest of the student fibres, Forte works best with pasty paint and rough canvas surfaces.
Forte brushes are robust and strong, with plenty of pushing power in their dark brown
fibres for painting with heavy body and impasto paints. Forte are hardy enough to be used on abrasive surfaces, even ceramic, and go all the way down to a 3/0 size for the finest
detail.
Junior Synthetics
Junior are the senior of the student range, with beautifully tensioned fibres and well-balanced handles.
Who are you calling novice? These brushes out-perform anything else in their price range.
Junior are hard-wearing, well-balanced, and responsive brushes for all paint types.
The fibre is soft yet with plenty of flex for accurate painting. The finely shaped brush head
is fixed to a specially shaped handle with a textured grip. Junior has a place in every
senior’s studio!
Tell Me More
Traces of brush use have been found in the Altamira caves, showing this most important
tool for the painter has been around for about 15,000 years. What began as a hollowed-out bone holding vegetation and feathers is now a sophisticated instrument assisting a
plethora of artistic desires.
Brush Shapes
In thinking about what brush shape to choose, it might help to know some history.
Even within the categories Round, Flat, and Filbert, there are many variations of length and shape.
In Europe prior to the mid-19th Century, round brushes were the only shape used for fine
art painting. A Round can hold a large reservoir of colour and be shaped into a variety of
points. This made it ideal for everything, from wide area work and glazing to fine detail.
The Round was used for all the paintings of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romantic
periods, so is a very versatile brush shape!
In the mid to late 19th Century, industrialization gave us the metal ferrule, revolutionizing
brush manufacture; and Impressionism gave us a revolution in painting. The new artists
wanted a break from the established styles, so picked up the latest brush shape: Flat
brushes, until then used for lettering. This gave them a light colour load to facilitate a
quick, dabbing application. Flat brushes are also good for spreading, and a wide flat
brush on a short handle is called a Mottler (from Decorative painting).
Anyone who has tried to use a flat brush in wet colour knows how the square shape is
hard to avoid, so towards the end of that most inventive century, the Filbert shape was
developed for subtle wet-in-wet blending and shaping.
The Vario Effect (left) is a crazy multiple line maker. The Vario Tip (right) is more controlled in its application.
While we now have a greater brush selection than ever before, they still comprise of those
three shapes – Round, Flat, and Filbert, though now in many wild combinations.
The length of the hair plays a big role in how your paint goes down. The shorter the hair,
the thinner the application and easier the control, while longer hair can lay down more
colour and be more expressive. The shape of the tip, whether blunt or fine, also affects
your mark.
Brush Size
You may wonder why there are so many relatively small brushes at Gordon Harris, when
plenty of artists paint on big surfaces.
Brush choice can all be a matter of scale. Detail or gesture? A No40 Junior Jumbo with a 20/0 Nova Micro.
The size of the brush has less to do with the area to be covered, and more to do with the
size of the mark you wish to see. A small brush makes a small mark; a large brush makes
a large mark. A small brush can cover a large area, doing so with small shifts in colour
and tone, easily controlled by you. A large brush on a large area will be more apparent,
perhaps better suited to gesture and movement, or an initial layering in of colour.
Handle Length
A lot of design care is put into da Vinci brush handles so they are balanced and
comfortable to hold over long periods of time. They are made to last a very long time, and the polishing makes them easy to clean. All wood handles are FSC.
The same brush head, eg Colineo, might be available on various length handles to offer
the painter differences in brush handling. Long handles are assumed to be for oil and
acrylic painting, to enable painting a various distances, eg working on a large surface, or
at an easel. Short handles are better for working at tabletop level, where a long handle
might poke you in the eye!
Almost all the brush lines feature Mottlers, each with different uses. A strong Synthetic Bristle Paddle
Mottler (left) is perfect for priming, while a Top Acryl Mottler (right) lays on varnish as smooth as glass.
Wide flat Mottlers traditionally have flat short handles. In 2025, da Vinci introduced the
Paddle – ergonomically shaping the handle for easier pushing and pulling of colour over
wide areas, especially when priming and blocking in colour. All da Vinci Mottlers now
feature their unique Duroplus system that locks the brush head to the handle: no lost
hairs, no loose ferrule, even with very rough use.
Travel Brushes feature a special screw-together handle that forms a pocket-sized
protective tube when travelling, and extend to a full-size brush for painting in situ.
Brush Care
The only real way to save money on brushes is to look after them. Look after your brushes
like a chef looks after their knives, so they last many years. It’s very easy, and they will
love you for it. Here are some recommendations.
Wipe solids into a paper towel and rinse between use to prevent paint from drying in the brush head.
Don’t leave your brush standing in water – it can bend the brush head, loosen the ferrule,
and sitting in the sediment keeps it dirty. Instead, pinch the paint solids out of the head
with a paper towel (this stops the solids from going into the jar then down the sink), rinse and lay aside. When you need to use it again, pat it dry on the paper towel and it’s back in
business.
Use da Vinci Brush-cleaning Soap and give you brushes a thorough lather and rinsing – they will last years.
Acrylic colour is the hardest on your brush, and care should be taken not to let the paint
dry in the brush-head. Pinch out the solids with a paper towel, rinse with water, and, using
da Vinci’s special brush-cleaning soap and a running tap, work a lather from the ferrule
to the tip of the hair, paying special attention to paint clinging to the top of the ferrule (the steel part where the hairs emerge from). Get your fingernails in there, be a little rough!
As long as the cleaning action is from ferrule to tip, this will not damage it. Rinse thoroughly, shape the brush-head, and lie flat to dry.
A few drops of Norma Blue Linseed or Medium W worked into the brush head will make the remaining oilcolour residue wash out easily with soap and water; it’s great for a quick clean between colours, too!
This is the easiest trick for cleaning oilcolour from your brush: pinch out the solids from
the brush head with a paper towel, then use a palette knife as a pipette to put a few drops
of Schmincke Medium W or Norma Blue Linseed Medium on your palette. Smoosh the
brush head into the Medium so it’s well incorporated through the fibres, then pinch out
the brush head with the paper towel again. The Medium has now made the oilcolour
residue in the brush head water-soluble! Take it to the sink and use da Vinci Soap under
a running tap to work a lather from the ferrule to the tip of the hair, paying special attention to paint clinging to the top of the ferrule. Rinse thoroughly, shape the brush-head, and lie flat to dry.
For an alternative method, replace the Medium with some refined linseed oil. While not
making the paint water-soluble, this will loosen the oilpaint significantly, and you can get
almost all the colour out at this stage.
Dab watercolour out of the brush with a paper towel, then rinse in a jar of water. This is
often followed by a second rinse in another water jar to ensure no colour remains. While
watercolour is less damaging than other paint media, it pays to give the brushes a regular
clean with da Vinci Soap to prevent the buildup of harmful solids in the brush head, then
rinse thoroughly, shape the brush-head, and lie flat to dry. Gouache should be cleaned
with the soap after each session.
Yes, the da Vinci Brush-cleaning Soap is better for your brushes than normal soap. It not
only deep cleans dried acrylic and oilcolour, it puts natural oils back into the brush head,
maintaining the condition of the fibres, whether natural or synthetic. Be aware that the
dissolving nature of the soap means you need to rinse all soap residue from your brush.
Make sure to protect natural hair, such as Sable and Squirrel from moths.
You can watch some of the brush-making magic at da Vinci right here: