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Then and now - brushes of the world

I think we all know more or less about the early-ages cave drawings from Lascaux. When I recently went into this, my first question was about the colours and brushes they used for it. Well, let me tell you, they had animal hair brushes (and colours prepared with natural pigments) made by themselves (a tuft of hair tied).

                                                                Chinese horse - Lascaux cave

From France estimated to be 17,300 years old to China starting around 4000 B.C., traditional painting has developed continuously over a period of more than six thousand years.

I have a passion for brushes, and my little collection is composed of several types already, out of the big variety of the existing brushes, which differ from tuft to handle, shapes and sizes, but the most beautiful (and useful) are the handmade natural hair Chinese brushes.

The tuft is made of animal hair: wolf fur, ox and horsetail hair, weasel hair brush, goat hair brush, and combination brushes, used for different subjects, like bamboo, flowers, landscapes, figures. There is another way to categorize brushes according to the ratio of length and diameter of their hair.

The Chinese calligraphy brushes can generally be categorized by:

1. Kinds of hair used

2. Sizes (lengths) of hair

3. Proportion of length to diameter of the brush's hair

Using the above criteria, we can identify four major categories of brushes for Chinese calligraphy based on materials used:

1. Hard Brushes - usually weasel hair brush “pronounced as Lun Hao ( 狼毫 )," more resilient and stiff

2. Soft Brushes - usually goat hair brush “pronounced as Yeung Hao ( 羊毫 ),” softer than weasel hair

3. Combination Brushes “pronounced as Jian Hao ( 兼毫 )” – generally combine weasel and goat hair or other hair in various percentages

4. Brushes made of other types of hair (rat, rabbit, deer, horse, bear, badger, rooster, baby hair and so on). Brushes made of baby hair ( 胎毛筆 ) are great gifts for lifetime memory and are very popular in asian families.

Another element that completes the image is the brush hanger, also a beautiful object.

The handle is usually made of bamboo, but they may also be made of ceramic, jade, horns, sometimes sculpted or decorated with drawings.

It’s fascinating how the “ancient” brush evolved to a software that simulates very well the touch of the traditional brush and the technique texture (pen, ink, watercolour, oil colour, chalk, airbrush, textiles, clouds, etc.)

And from prehistoric brushes to the modern approach, it is fascinating how you can personalize every digital brush with a simple software nowadays, and that by adjusting a lot of details, like saturation, angle, spacing, scattering, jitter, tilt, pressure, …(and these personalized brushes, patterns or extracts from a photo, what a wonderful and innovative method to texture the paintings)  and the result is amazingly realistic only with some mouse clicks.....nice transformation during the times :)!