Back to School: How to choose art materials for your kids - brushes

School is just around the corner and we thought we'd prepare a few posts for you to help you out of your dilemmas what art materials are good for your children.

Before we get started with today's topics, there's something very important every parent and a person who works with children should know. The materials we give/buy for the children show how we respect the children and their personality. If we give them old, used materials that are in bad shape, the children will get the message that we don't trust them they'd use the new materials with care. That doesn't mean you should buy super great and the best materials for your children, it means that we don't give them a marker which doesn't work or whith which a child has a hard time to draw with...

The next thing we need to teach children before they use any kind of materials is: how to use these materials. If we teach them that, then the materials will be in a good shape and in a perfect condition all the time (if we choose quality materials of course). We will show you how to use the materials in a future posts..., but now we will start with the posts which will tell you how to make sure you buy quality materials for your kids.

So let's get started! :) - with brushes:

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When we go shopping for brushes, we need to know first what kind of paint the children will paint with. Tempera, watercolors or aquarelles, acrylic paint...? For watercolors (or paint where we use lots of water), 'round' brushes are the best (top of the picture), and for tempera and acrylics we use flat brushes (bottom of the picture).

Smilies show which brushes are good and which are not so good. Any brush that looses its hair is not worth a cent. You can try this by pulling its hair or pushing the brush hard into your hand.

brushes copici 2 creatissimo lab.jpg

Round brushes should always have a point at the end, so when wet, you can paint precise lines with them no matter what size of the brush you have. 

Flat brushes should also be thinner at the tip. When wet, you can paint precise lines with it as well. If we choose quality, soft flat brushes, we can use them with watercolors too.

We usually choose brushes with synthetic hair for various reasons. One of the reasons is that we can use the brushes with different sorts of paint, plus they don't have a smell like some brushes with animal hair...

We recommend to buy brushes in an art shop. They have cheaper brushes for school children which are still good enough for your child and won't fall apart. If you are afraid your child would loose the 'precious' brushes (or other materials), put the name labels on every item he/she has.

Do you still have questions about brushes? Ask in the comments bellow and we'll try to help! :)

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Next time we'll talk about drawing materials - pencils, colored pencils, crayons...

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PS: These recommendations are strictly our own experiences from workshops with children. No sponsors here or claims that these recommendations are the best advices ever. Your experiences count too!