11 Best Fan Paint Brushes
I bought my first fan brush expecting magic and got a spiky, shedding mess. A few more tries told me the brush was at fault, not my technique. Every brush shape has a job it is built for, and a fan brush only does its job when the bristles are set properly and stay put.
So, what is the best fan paint brush? The best fan paint brush has a comfortable handle, works with different types of paints, and has bristles that are laid in a straight line, don’t shed easily, and don’t separate into clumps when wet.
What To Use Fan Paint Brushes For
Fan paint brushes are generally used for painting. However, you can also use fan paint brushes for makeup application or pottery glazing.
Using fan paint brushes for actual painting can be done in a variety of ways. Generally, you can use fan paint brushes for watercolor, oil, and acrylic painting.
Fan paint brushes are ideal for blending. They work great to smooth across colors already painted on the canvas or to apply fresh paint in a soft way.
Famous painter Bob Ross also popularized using fan paint brushes to create trees. It’s a simple method that involves lightly coating the bristles in paint and gently dabbing them onto the canvas.
For more details on painting trees with the fan brush method, check out his tutorial video here.
Aside from painting, fan brushes are also useful in makeup application. They’re typically used to apply highlight or rouge along the cheekbones thanks to their light touch.
In crafting, fan brushes are used for pottery glazing. They’re a common tool for glazing because of their wide surface area for application and the gentle way they transfer liquid to a surface.
Buyer’s Guide – Fan Paint Brushes
When you’re looking for a good fan paint brush, there are specific characteristics you want to make sure your brush has. We’ve listed them below with details as to why they’re important.
1. Comfortable Handle
The first thing is ensuring it has a comfortable handle. You’ll be using this paint brush a lot and you want to make sure it feels right in the hand.
If your hand feels awkward or hurts while you’re holding the brush, it will affect the way you apply the paint.
Your hand should feel at ease holding the brush so you can apply the paint as precisely as you need to for your picture.
Some handles splinter easily or have sharp pieces sticking out of the plastic coating. Keep an eye out for good quality handles that won’t fall apart.
2. Variety Of Paint Types
Generally, paint brushes should work with a variety of paint. If you want to switch between oil and acrylic and watercolor paints, you should be able to do so with ease.
It’s not a good idea to use the same paint brush for multiple paints, but if you are buying a 10-pack of fan paint brushes, you can use 3 for oil, 3 for acrylic, 3 for watercolor, and have one bonus.
If the paint brush pack indicates that it only works for a specific type of paint or won’t work with oil paint, for example, it may not be a great set for you.
Fan brushes tend to be more versatile than other style of brushes and should be ready to use with any type of paint.
3. Straight Bristles
If you hold the brush with the bristles facing you, the end bristles should all be laid and secured in a straight line. The line of the tips of the bristles shouldn’t curve or look like a wave.
One of the main reasons people use fan brushes is to get straight lines to use for evergreen trees in the Bob Ross method. If your bristles are curved or wavy, you won’t get the straight lines you need for the limbs.
Seeing a curved pattern at the edges of the bristles can also indicate that the brush was made carelessly. It wasn’t made or quality checked with the attention to detail that ensures a good product.
It’s best to stick with bristles that are laid carefully in a straight line.
4. Bristles Don’t Shed Easily
Another pesky problem with fan brushes is bristle shedding.
This can happen with any brush but is especially common with fan brushes due to their thin layer of bristles.
High-quality fan brushes won’t shed when you paint. The bristles should be secured in the metal component of the brush.
If you see bristles coming out with the paint and left behind all over your canvas, that can be an indicator of a low-quality product.
5. Bristles Don’t Separate
Another big indicator of low-quality fan paint brushes is if the bristles separate into clumps when wet.
To test this, simply dip the bristles of your brush into water, pat them dry with a paper towel, and see if the fan has held its shape.
If the bristles do separate into clumps, try pulling them apart back into a fan shape and see if they stay. If they go back into their clumps, the bristles are poor quality and won’t hold up well when you paint.
You can’t get a smooth blend if the bristles are clumped and separated. You also won’t get the iconic evergreen trees of Bob Ross with separated bristles.
High-quality fan paint brushes should hold their fan shape with bristles that can stand on their own without clumping when wet.
The Best Fan Paint Brushes
Now that you have an idea of the qualities to look for in a set of fan paint brushes, we’ve included the top best fan brushes below.
These brushes either have all or most of the qualities listed, so you can’t go wrong choosing any of these sets.
| Rank | Product | Number of Brushes/Material | Where To Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | DUGATO Artist Fan Paint Brush | Set of 7 - hog bristle | Check it on Amazon |
| 2. | Nicpro Fan Brush Set | Set of 10 - synthetic | Check it on Amazon |
| 3. | 9-Piece Nylon Fan Brush Set | Set of 9 - nylon | Check it on Amazon |
| 4. | ZEM Brush Hog Bristle Fan Set | Set of 4 - hog bristle | Check it on Amazon |
| 5. | Golden Maple Fan Brush Set | Set of 6 - hog bristle | Check it on Amazon |
| 6. | Amagic Fan Brush Set | Set of 6 - nylon | Check it on Amazon |
| 7. | ZHOUXINXING High-Grade Brush Set | Set of 6 - wild boar bristle | Check it on Amazon |
| 8. | GACDR Hog Bristle Fan Brushes | Set of 7 - hog bristle | Check it on Amazon |
| 9. | ROYAL BRUSH White Taklon Brush Set | Set of 4 - taklon | Check it on Amazon |
| 10. | Jieklove Fan Brush Set | Set of 3, 6, or 13 - boar bristle | |
| 11. | Benicci Paint Brush Set of 16 | Set of 16 - nylon | Check it on Amazon |
1. DUGATO Artist Fan Paint Brush Set
This set of 7 fan paint brushes is perfect for anyone looking for affordable, high-quality, and variety in size.
The bristles on these DUGATO brushes are highly regarded as being stiff enough to hold the paint, but flexible enough to blend and apply smoothly.
Many customers have also used these brushes for pottery glazing, so if that’s your goal for your brushes, this set would be perfect for you.
With long, comfortable wooden handles, these brushes will help anyone create art with ease.
2. Nicpro Fan Brush Set, 10 Pieces
Ten brushes, sizes 3/0 through 16. That spread is the whole argument for this set. The big ones lay in a treeline or a wave crest in a single pass, and the 3/0 is fine enough for whiskers and single blades of grass.
The bristles are synthetic and dense, so they hold enough paint to finish a stroke instead of dragging out halfway. They take acrylic and oil equally well, and craft paint doesn’t clog them.
Handles are birch with double-crimped aluminum ferrules. Across more than a thousand reviews the set holds a 4.6-star average, which almost never happens with budget multipacks.
3. 9-Piece Nylon Fan Brush Set
This is the stock-up option. Nine fan brushes in graduated sizes with long wooden handles, 11 inches on the smallest and 12.5 on the largest, so you can stand back from an easel and still keep control.
The hair is nylon, soft with a bit of spring-back, and that suits watercolor washes and thinned acrylic better than stiff bristle does. Feathery clouds, hair, fur, smoke — this is the texture for those.
Nearly 800 reviewers keep it at 4.5 stars. Nothing fancy about the set, but the fans keep their shape after a wash, which is the part cheap brushes usually get wrong.
4. ZEM Brush Hog Bristle Fan Set
ZEM’s set is four stiff white hog bristle fans in sizes 2, 4, 6 and 8. The handles are short, roughly five to six inches, so it’s a set for working close over a table rather than at arm’s length.
Stiff bristle moves thick paint. Dry brush it across a dried layer and you get bark, grass and fur texture that a soft nylon fan can’t really produce.
The heads are crimped and glued into nickel-plated ferrules and shedding complaints are rare, which is how it holds 4.6 stars over 800-plus reviews. Nail techs buy the same set for dusting, so the bristle is anchored well.
5. Golden Maple Fan Brush Set
The hog hair bristles on this Golden Maple set work great.
Hog hair is ideal because it’s stiffer, meaning it won’t clump and separate as easily when wet and will hold their shape to stay in a straight line.
The wooden handles have a nickel-plated copper tube to hold the bristles to the handle, securing them with a rust-resistant metal.
You can get this set in a 6 or 3 pack, though they tend to run the same price so you might as well get 6 for the price of 3 brushes!
6. Amagic Fan Brush Set
Amagic has a bit of an issue with their listing. They describe their brushes as having hog hair, but when the brushes arrive there’s a note in the package that describes them as having nylon bristles.
Although their listing could use an update, we don’t think that should prevent you from looking into these brushes.
Despite the material confusion, these fan brushes still work great. They make blending a breeze and can help you make those “Happy Little Trees” that Bob Ross talks about!
They also come with their own case, so you have a safe place to store your brushes when not in use. This is great if you have young children or animals at home that can get a hold of your brushes and potentially wreak havoc.
7. ZHOUXINXING High-Grade Brush Set
With 6 different sizes, these high-grade brushes from ZHOUXINXING are a great option for any painter. They’re ready for use with watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and oil paints.
For those potters out there, these brushes work great to glaze pottery too. They come highly recommended from many customers who’ve used them to glaze their ceramics.
The bristles are a little on the softer side, but this isn’t always a bad thing. Stiff bristles can be great for the Bob Ross tree method, but soft bristles work great when doing smooth blending.
8. GACDR Hog Bristle Fan Brushes, 7 Pieces
Seven hog bristle fans running from a size 2 up to a 14, aimed squarely at oil painters. The bristle is stiff enough to pick thick paint up off the palette and push it around without the fan folding flat.
Copper crimped ferrules hold the hair and the birch handles are long, so this one suits easel work. Blending wet into wet is where it earns its place: feather the edge between two colors and the join disappears.
It sits at 4.5 stars across roughly 700 reviews.
9. ROYAL BRUSH White Taklon Brush Set
These ROYAL BRUSH fan paint brushes are unique for their snow-white bristles. Compared to most other brushes which have beige or brown bristles, these brushes stand apart. You’ll be able to see how much color is left in the bristles clearly.
With this set, you’ll get 4 different sized fan brushes as well as a small zipper case to store them when not in use.
Although not great with oil paint, these brushes still work well with watercolor, acrylic, and tempera paint.
Tempera paint is widely used in a school or child-focused setting, so if you plan to paint with little ones, these brushes could be a great choice for you!
10. Jieklove Fan Brush Set
Jieklove offers 3 different sets: the 3 pack of fan brushes, the 6 pack of fan brushes, and the 13 pack of assorted brushes to give you a full collection of brush types.
These brushes are made with high-quality boar’s hair bristles, giving you the stiffness you need for any painting technique you hope to use.
They work great with different types of paint like watercolor, oil, and acrylic, but are also great for face paintings and nail art.
Not only are they great for canvas paintings, but they work well for painting acrylic on rocks too!
With such versatility and high-quality materials, these fan paint brushes are a true contender when shopping for a brush set.
11. Benicci Paint Brush Set of 16
This Benicci pack is an assorted set of 16 different types of brushes, including flat, round, angle, filbert, liner, glaze and fan.
Although it only has one fan brush, we wanted to include it as an option because these brushes are so high-quality. With brushes as good as these, you’ll only need one fan brush.
Opposed to some other wooden handles that have a lacquered finish, these have a matte finish for a smoother hand feel.
These brushes also have high-quality nylon hair for their bristles. Even though nylon traditionally is too soft when compared with boar’s hair, these brushes still work great and stand up well to create the Bob Ross trees.
What makes this set even better is the sturdy carrying case (complete with the ability to stand on its own as a brush holder) that comes with the brushes. When you buy this set, you’ll also get a bonus mixing knife and art sponge.
Overall, customers rave that this is the best set you can get for a good deal. At a significantly lower price point than professional brushes, you pay less without sacrificing quality.
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