A CLOSER LOOK AT WINSOR 7 NEWTON SERIES 7 KOLINSKY
Watercolour painting is a wonderful activity. It’s made all the more pleasurable, with more reliable finished results, when you use the best paint brushes. The Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable Water Colour Brush is often called the world’s finest watercolour brush. When you look into its components, how it’s made, and its heritage, it’s easy to see why.
The Series 7’s origins are very prestigious, with the high-quality standards set in 1866. This was when Queen Victoria commissioned Winsor & Newton to produce the very finest water colour brushes in her favourite size, the No.7. Made from the hair of the kolinsky, a species of weasel found in the Siberian wilderness, Kolinsky brushes are well-loved and well-used by leading watercolour artists. Once you paint with a Kolinsky brush, these artist brushes will become a firm favourite and an essential tool for watercolour practice.
Why? Because of the hairs’ unique quality for picking up and dropping paint as well as their brush’s precise control when painting either watercolours or acrylics. Natural hair brushes are often favoured by watercolour artists over their synthetic counterparts. This is because natural hair brushes tend to carry and hold more colour than a synthetic brush. Sable hair brushes taper naturally, so when added to a brush creates a fine point, a quality not as easily achieved by synthetic brushes.
HANDMADE WITH CARE
The construction of the Winsor and Newton’s sable brush lies at the heart of its quality. Hand crafted with great care, Series 7 Kolinsky Sable Brushes are made from only the finest Kolinsky Sable hair, secured in rust-proof, seamless nickel plated ferrules with black polished handles. All of Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes are handmade in England by the company’s expert brush-makers, each with more than 10 years’ experience. Each brush is carefully shaped and rolled to make the perfect dome shape. Watch the crafting process in action and see the precision quality for yourself.
To add to that sense of quality, the larger sizes of each brush are packed into an individual velvet-lined box with a tag displaying the name of the Series 7 brush maker who made that particular brush.
PRECISION POINT
Available in a range of sizes to cover a multitude of painterly styles and techniques, every Series 7 artist brush should come to a crisp point and maintain that point during use. The same fine line can be achieved with a size 10 as it would be with a size 0. The larger belly of the Series 7 brush holds more colour than other sable brushes making the application of expressive washes so much easier and with more consistent results. Winsor & Newton were so confident of the professional painterly finish the Series 7 Kolinsky can create, that the company put the artist’s brush to the test against its main competitor. See the brush, and the painterly line it creates, in action here.
