I come to you today to talk about the BendyBrush and it’s uses. I made my first BendyBrush by accident when I left a new (non sable) brush in my cleaning water for too long, and found it had acquired a bend at the tip that I couldn’t straighten out. Calamity you might cry, but this brush has become one of my most useful tools, and I’ve continued to make more of them (in the time honoured way) as and when a brush has come to the end of its useful life, and shuffled off to PVA land.

You see, there are some times when a straight pointed brush can be a slight hindrance. I always found it tricky to paint the edges of armour without paint spilling into the recesses between the plates.

The BendyBrush (should I trademark this?) removes this problem by allowing me to apply paint with the part of the brush just below the tip, the tip pointing upward and away from the recess,

and leaving a soft edge to the paint that could not be achieved if I turned the brush around and tried to apply the paint with the tip of the brush facing the centre of the plate.

As a bonus, if I need to apply paint into any recesses, I can turn the brush around with the bendy tip pointing towards the groove, and apply a line without having to worry about the paint on the rest of the brush going onto the edges of the armour.

Recently, and with my painting techniques improving, I’ve also found that painting folds in fabric is a lot easier if you don’t have to worry about hard brush lines from the brush tip.

So, give it a try. Take a cheapish brush and put a bend in it, and you might find that it works for you.

Reproduced with permission from Panza