Paint Brush Highlights: Encaustic Line

The Encaustic line by Dynasty, a selection of beautifully designed and built bristle brushes designed for encaustic artists, in an array of shapes, bristle types and sizes.  With the consistency and style of encaustic wax in mind, these brushes are ideal for laying down wax, blending, collage work, and layering color.  These brushes would also be ideal for faux finishing work, murals and scenic artists.  Part of the line is a series of scenic fitches, soft and springy with an exacting edge, (my personal favorites).  A few of the brushes are camel hair mops, a generous tuft of the softest fibers you'll ever put in paint, brushes that might work nicely for watermedia artists, too.  Take a peek and let us know what you think.

Black Bristle Oval Sash — A springy bristle to pull a large amount of hot wax over, or to work paper into layers of wax. They're great for blending, for exact layering, and for overlapping color.  

Bristle and Ox Blend — Contain a mixture of hair that is good for holding large amounts of wax at different temperatures and different consistencies, from thin to thick. Great for achieving smooth applications, these brushes also serve as "storage containers" when wax is allowed to dry in the brush fibers — simply reheat the brush to make the wax fluid again.  Comes in Angle, Flat and Oval.

Camel Hair Super Mop — Great for blending and smoothing out small areas. They're also ideal for applying powdered pigments — just dust them lightly over hot or tacky wax.

White Bristle Extra Long Flat — Assures a smooth, even flow while achieving definition. They're great for layering wax and paper, for 3–D work, or for applying texture to your work. Use a separate brush for each color range. 

White Bristle Scenic Fitch — Made of natural Shanghai Bristle taken from the back of the hog, boiled for four hours, and hand-sorted and selected for silkiness, length, strength, and flexibility.  These brushes hold a lot of color and offer great control.

Grainer Flat — Known for a tremendous amount of spring and snap, Grainer Flats offer great control and the ability to achieve unique patterns in encaustic paintings.  

To purchase these beauties, you can find them on Blick Art Materials website.

Keep Painting,
Karyn

For more brush information, check out the Dynasty Brush website.

Artist Resources: Art Lessons for Teachers

Many of our artists here on the blog and on our website are educators, both in public schools and private instructors.  Below is a small list of Lesson Planning Resources.  If you have additional websites or blogs to share with us, please enter them in the comments below.  

NAEA- the largest creative community established exclusively for visual arts educators, university professors, researchers and scholars, teaching artists, administrators, and art museum educators. A huge resource for lesson plans and sharing lesson plans as well as searching for grants and job opportunities.

Art of Education -- AOE exists to provide Art Teachers with Ridiculously Relevant™ Professional Development.  Blog run by Jessica Balsley.  Includes accredited online classes, lesson plans, downloads, articles.  

4th grade work from Duluth Edison Charter
School in Minesota from Artsonia

Artsonia -- The world's largest kids' art museum.  The story of Artsonia begins with a dream that artwork created from kids around the world can be shared and enjoyed by everyone. Teachers can upload kids' artwork and upload and review lesson plans.

Kinderart.com -- Free art lesson plans for toddlers through teens, including art history lessons.

Incredibleart.org -- Huge art resource for jobs, copyright info, news, teacher policies, lesson plans, art gallery and on and on.  

Dick Blick -- Art materials retailer and resource holds many lesson plans for teachers along with video lessons.  

Mrs. Picasso's Art Room -- Art blog from Denise Pannell, sharing her lessons and resources

The Teaching Palette is a blog dedicated to the teachers who constantly work on perfecting the art of education. The heart and purpose of this site is to provide an environment where the love and knowledge of art education will be advanced.  Has another list of Lesson and Art Resources as well as a list of lesson plans.

Ancient Art Education and
Lessons from the Getty

Discount School Supply -- Free craft lessons and ideas, as well as load of other resources for all kinds of teachers, including a place to purchase supplies.

Getty Teacher Programs -- Resources for the classroom, lesson plans for teachers and free programs on visiting the Getty; video games and activities for students.  

Majestic Taj Mahal from Crayola, Grade 3

One Crayola short -- Blog by Jodi Youngman designed with art lessons for 45 minute classes.

Teachers Pay Teachers -- Teachers Pay Teachers is the an open marketplace for educators to buy, sell, and share their original resources.  Includes all grades and homeschoolers, all subjects including visual arts and art history.

Crayola -- Over 1200 lesson plans by concept, grade, or medium.

The Smart Teacher -- to facilitate connections between art educators, art lovers and art organizations.  Has a large collection of lessons including digital and photography lessons.  Searches available by artist, medium, subject, principles or movement.

Crystal Productions -- Publisher of art education resources has a full list of free lesson plans.

Do you have a blog or website where you share your lessons?  Or do you know of other resources I can add here?  Keep me in the loop and post a comment so I can add to our list.

Keep Painting, 
Karyn 

For more brush information, check out the Dynasty Brush website.

Paint Brush Canisters

Recently we had a question sent to us from an art teacher, purchasing brushes for her classroom.  She was looking for the right brushes to purchase in bulk for specific types of media.  Since not all brushes are created equal, not even in bulk, I thought this an opportune time to share the differences in our brush canisters.

We don't have all of our brushes available in canister, or bulk, but quite a few and many different shapes and sizes, both long and short handle.  I have listed the brush types available with their shapes, hair type, and the preferred medium.  

Please note that there are many types of canisters from Dynasty available, below is just the basic list of hair types.

Brushes in canisters can be purchased from many of our dealers online and by catalogue:  Utrecht, Nasco, School Specialty, United Art and Education, Alvin and Dick Blick to name a few.

Brush	Shapes	Hair	Media
Eye of the Tiger	flats, rounds, oval, liner, fan, angle,	synthetic hair	All media
Mastadon	flats, round, filbert, angle, liner, fan	synthetic blend	All media
Gold Synthetic & Blue Squirrel quills	large rounds	synthetic hair &  blue squirrel	acrylic, pottery
Faux Sable	rounds from 0-10	natural hair	watercolor, acrylic, oil
Silver synthetic	flat shaders and small rounds	synthetic hair	oil and acrylic
Red Sable	rounds and flats	red sable	watercolor, acrylic,  gouache and oil
Finest White Synthetic	rounds and flats	synthetic hair	oil and acrylic
Interlocked White Bristle	rounds, brights, flats, filberts	white bristle	oil and acrylic
Fine Gold Nylon	flat, bright, round	synthetic hair	oil and acrylic
Camel Hair	rounds and flats	horse hair	watercolor, gouache
Black Bristle	large flats	black bristle	acrylic, latex, tempera
Golden Synthetic	flat shader, detail round	synthetic hair	oil and acrylic
Design Assortment	large fans, oval mops	white goat,  grey bristle	acrylic, latex, tempera
Glaze Assortment	fans and glaze	white bristle, black goat	acrylic, latex, tempera
Emerald Design WC	angle, round, liner	synthetic hair	watercolor, acrylic, gouache
Ruby Student WC	round, flat, angle, oval	synthetic hair	watercolor, acrylic, gouache
Sapphire Student WC	flat or round	synthetic hair	watercolor, acrylic, gouache
Kid Dynasty	assorted	black & white bristle	acrylic, latex, tempera

Keep Painting, 
Karyn 

For more brush information, check out the Dynasty Brush website.