Miniature Painting
Best Brushes for Miniature Painting (Start With Two)
You need two brushes to paint miniatures well: a size 2 round with a good point for 90% of the work, and a size 0 for eyes, buckles, and freehand. That's it. Not a 15-piece set, not a detail brush smaller than your patience. Spend $15-25 on those two, learn to care for them, and upgrade the workhorse to sable when the first one dies. Here's the reasoning, plus the care habits that matter more than the brand.
The counterintuitive part: bigger is better
Beginners reach for tiny brushes because miniatures are tiny. It's backwards. A quality size 2 round holds a proper reservoir of paint and still comes to a needle point, so it paints fine detail and covers a cloak without drying out mid-stroke. A 000 brush holds so little paint that it starts drying before the bristles reach the model, which is why work done with it looks scratchy.
The point does the detail work, not the size. Watch anyone good paint an eyeball and you'll usually see a size 1 or 2 doing it.
What to buy at each stage
| Stage | Buy | Rough cost |
|---|---|---|
| Day one | Synthetic size 2 round + size 0 round | $15-25 for both |
| A drybrush (soon) | Any cheap flat or old ruined brush | $5, or free |
| First upgrade | One kolinsky sable size 1 or 2 | $15-30 |
| Later, if ever | A second sable, a glaze/wash brush | Optional |
Two notes on that table. The drybrush should be a brush you don't love, because drybrushing is deliberate brush abuse; the technique scrubs pigment across raised texture and destroys bristles doing it. And the sable upgrade is real, not snobbery. Natural kolinsky hair holds more paint, snaps back to a point, and lasts years with care. Painters who swap say the same thing: they didn't know how much the brush was fighting them.
Brands people trust, so you have names to look for: Army Painter and Citadel synthetics are everywhere and fine to start on. For sable, Winsor & Newton Series 7 and Raphael 8404 are the two perennial answers, with Rosemary & Co as the budget-sable favorite.
The care habits that actually extend brush life
A $30 sable dies in a month if you treat it like a $5 synthetic. The killers, in order:
- Paint in the ferrule. The metal collar is where brushes go to die. Paint that creeps in there dries, splays the bristles, and no amount of soap fixes it. Never load the brush past halfway up the bristles.
- Letting paint dry in the brush. Rinse the moment you stop using a color, not when you remember.
- Stirring paint pots with the brush, or mashing it into the palette like a mop. Use the tip like a pen, not a scrub pad.
- Storing it wet and point-down in the water cup. Bristles take a bend overnight and keep it.
Once a week, work a little brush soap (or gentle dish soap) into the bristles, rinse, and reshape the point with your fingers before it dries. Thirty seconds. Sable brushes treated this way genuinely last for years; we know painters still on their first Series 7 after five.
One more habit that saves brushes and paint jobs at the same time: keep your paint thinned properly (we wrote a whole guide on thinning), because thick paint forces you to mash and overload.
Do you need special brushes for speedpaints?
No. Speedpaints flow off the same rounds; if anything they reward a slightly larger brush because you want to load generously and lay the coat down in one pass (technique details in the first mini walkthrough). The one addition worth considering is a cheap size 4 or 6 for big cloaks and bases, so your good brush isn't doing hauling work.
When to replace a brush
When it stops coming to a point after rinsing and reshaping, demote it. Dead rounds become drybrushes, glue applicators, and basing-texture tools; a hobby desk has no truly retired brushes. If a brush hooks at the very tip, you can sometimes buy a week by trimming the single stray hair with a razor, but a hooked tip usually means the ferrule has paint in it, and that's a one-way door.
Frequently asked questions
What size brush should I use for miniatures?
A size 2 round for nearly everything, a size 0 for the finest details. The point does detail work, not the diameter, and a bigger belly means the paint doesn't dry out on the way to the model.
Are expensive kolinsky sable brushes worth it?
After your first synthetic wears out, yes. Sable holds more paint, keeps a sharper point, and outlives several synthetics with basic care. As a very first brush it's a poor buy only because new painters kill brushes while learning ferrule discipline.
Why do my brushes lose their point so fast?
Almost always paint drying in the ferrule, from loading too deep or rinsing too late. Load half the bristle length at most, rinse immediately between colors, and reshape the tip after every session.
What brush should I use for drybrushing?
The worst one you own. Drybrushing scrubs and splays bristles by design, so sacrifice a cheap flat or a retired round, and keep your good brushes far away from it.
Do I need a wet palette too?
Not on day one, but it's the best $15 upgrade in the hobby once you're painting weekly. It keeps acrylics workable for hours, which means less re-mixing and less temptation to use paint that's gone half-dry and stringy.