Natural Materials (Patreon)

This weekend my latest round of brushes gave up the ghost in the push to finish the book cover for the next novel, Fireborn’s Legacy. This set has been holding out for a year or so, supplemented by the last round of brushes: every time I buy replacements, the previous brushes become the ones I use for the parts of a painting where it doesn’t matter if the tips aren’t as precise as they used to be. In this way, I step through various sets of brushes as they expire, and this is good because I only use brushes made with animal hairs. In specific, the tail hairs of the male siberian Kolinsky sable, which is considered a pest in the few areas it can be found. The kolinsky sable can’t be farmed, so all the tail hairs collected for brushes are from animals trapped for other purposes; the brush farming is considered a by-product of a different industry altogether.

Nevertheless, these critters are hard to come by, and the supply (as you might expect) is not predictable. That means sometimes these brushes are (relatively) cheap, and sometimes they are outrageously expensive. Right now, they’re outrageously expensive; in 2016, I bought two #6 brushes for $20.23 each. A single #6 brush, when I checked yesterday, is currently $61. Some part of that is inflation, but a larger part of it is simply the fluctuation of a market based on natural materials.

I like this about my supplies. I could use synthetic brushes and papers that perform predictably and are not subject to odd spikes in supply or price, but what I love about art is how it forces me to interface with the corporeal world that I would otherwise fail to notice most of the time. It reminds me of the eccentricity and serendipidities of existing in a complex set of relationships that link us to the natural world… and how sometimes we are the master, and in control, and sometimes we are subject to the whims and furies of nature.

Appropriately, the brush company I’ve been buying from, Escoda, is a third-generation family business that has been making brushes for almost a hundred years, by hand. I’ve used many brushes in the decades I’ve spent making art, but the Escodas always draw me back. There’s just something about them.

Anyway, I can live without the (ridiculously overpriced) #6, but the #4, #2, #1, and #0s in my arsenal are dead and they’re the ones I use for fine detail. So I put those in the Dick Blick shopping cart, along with some paper and pencils, and now I’m running a grab bag sale on Three Jaguars comic art to pay for them. There are 20 grab bags and 7 are already gone… if you’re interested in one, I’d check it out soon. That URL is here: (https://studiomcah.etsy.com/listing/1662943952/three-jaguars-comic-original-artwork), and you can use COMICSALE to get half off. That coupon code is only for subscribers, because if my originals are going to homes at reduced prices, I want them in the hands of you all, preferentially. :)

Mostly I wanted an excuse to talk about brushes, though…!