Zoltan Szabo’s Bristle Slant Brushes

Zoltan Szabo’s Bristle Slant is a stiff hog bristle brush built with a slant for special watercolor techniques. It’s perfect for laying in a background or a big sky. The design allows you to use the pointed end of the slant to pick up color from your palette and just lay it in across your paper. Using the whole width wet, you can flow a sky or a background in a beautiful graded wash.

If you were in Zoltan’s workshops you may have heard the story of how he started using bristle brushes with watercolor. He took off for the Canadian “bush” with a friend for a weekend of painting. When they were too far to turn around. Zoltan realized that he had left most of his painting equipment behind! His oil painting friend generously offered a bristle brush, a palette knife and little else! Faced with the choice of adapting or twiddling his thumbs for the weekend, Zoltan quickly adapted. As time passed, Zoltan worked with Jack Richeson to bring out his own version of slanted bristle brushes and then soft slant brushes. He was the first to realize the advantage of these strangely shaped innovative tools.

Bristle brushes deliver lots of pigment, they are great to establish rich dark washes early and for late texture. The sloppy edge can be used to define grass clumps, pine needles, or distant fir trees.