Water Brush

A water brush is a plastic hollow paintbrush that essentially makes you a mobile watercolor-painting fiend. Instead of having to carry around cups and filling them with water to clean your brushes, just get yourself one of these handy little things.

Unscrew the brush tip, fill it with water, and when you're ready to paint, squeeze the barrel. Water flows out of the brush tip similar to the way ink comes out of a pen. You use it like a regular paintbrush but you don't have to swirl it in a cup of water every time you need to clean it, and you're not always worried you're going to spill gray brush water all over the table and onto the light-colored carpet.

I bought one of these last year and just got around to trying it out today. The plastic construction feels a bit made in China, but it turns out it's well designed and you have a lot of control over the water flow. The brush tip is good quality as well, and allows for a lot of flexibility, from washes to fine lines. I'm still getting used to it (and watercolors in general), but overall it has exceeded my expectations.

Here is a drawing I did today using watercolor pencils and my not-so-new water brush.

Kitty Von Quim at Dr. Sketchy's