Miniature Painting Fundamentals 9 - Brushes

Hey there all! So I wanted to go a little more into pricing and life span -
- Synthetics, $2-$8, at their best for 10-20 hours, then will degrade depending on how much they are used. If you're an infrequent painter you can likely get a fair amount of use over the year from a handful of brushes, especially if you cycle your older brushes to base coat duty and use your fresh ones just for highlights and details. Sizing can be wonky on these depending on the brand and the shape, so IMO best to buy in person unless you know the brand and sizing and are confident ordering online.
-Kolinsky Sables, with inflation these days price range is more like $12-25 per brush and that is going to make some people unhappy. Upside is, if you don't leave these sitting nose-down in the paint water, they can last for YEARS. This is why I mostly buy and use Kolinsky sables. I am pretty hard on brushes, and back when I was painting full-time and clocking 50-60 hours a week of brush-time, it would still take me 5-6 months to destroy a DaVinci sable. Friends I know who paint just a few hours per week have their brushes last for literally years. So, if you take good care of your brushes, economically the expensive ones are actually cheaper in the long run!
I get my Kolinsky brushes through dickblick.com, or on occasion Amazon.com, for every brand but Reaper. Make sure you get the short handled ones--sometimes there's a long-handled option! Look at the pictures and read carefully. :) Brands I most often hear people espousing include Winsor & Newton Series 7, DaVinci Maestro, Raphael 8404 and 8408,, Rosemary & Company, and there are a few others as well. Ask on your miniature-painting social-media board of choice!
I go through Reaper for the Reaper brand (reapermini.com--disclaimer, I do work for Reaper, but I do think that the 0/5 brush especially is useful in their Kolinsky line).
And that's it! Hope this was useful to y'all, and always remember that your own experience with a given brush will be different from someone else's. Try a bunch of shapes, sizes and brands until you find brushes you really love. :D

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Thank you so much for these videos. Do you any advice on how to do layers ?