The beginner artist or first time painter can often find the range of brushes for sale quite mind blowing. It's difficult to know quite where to begin!start and to be truthful the best way to learn what the characteristics of each is to buy a handful of different varieties and experiment, finding out for yourself how each type of brush deals with the medium of your choice. Unfortunately not all of us have a limitless supply of funds and a never ending amount of time free so we have done a quick round up of the main kinds of artist brushes you are likely to encounter and what you may best employ them for.

We will split the most widely available types of paint brushes that you can use with acrylic paint in to 8 categories:

Round tipped brushes are mostly used for detailed work like fine lines and coloring in smaller areas, the strength of the line created can be freely adjusted from wide to narrow depending on the pressure applied, for the finest of lines use merely the absolute tip pressing down more to produce more width.

Pointed tip art brushes are very similar in looks to the round tip art brushes except as the name would infer, they are narrower and finish in a distinct point. This makes them just right for ultra fine detail work and outlining.

Round detail art brushes have shorter hairs than the usual round art brushes and are made for detailed work and small controlled brush strokes, they usually hold more paint than the pointed tip artists brushes and the shorter bristles are ideally suited for working close to the painting.

Flat artists brushes have a squared off end and enable good bold strokes, ideal for coloring large areas of the substrate but also to lay down stripes and quite thin straight lines. Bristles are usually medium to long in length.

Bright tipped art brushes are reasonably alike to flat artists brushes but have sides that curve in towards the tip. Brights normally have medium to short length bristles which make them more suitable for working close to the canvas. They are excellent for applying thick color. Fat and oval-shaped at the tip with medium to long bristles.

The filbert art brush is a style of hybrid of the round and flat paint brush. The slightly rounded tip allows it to be used for details and as it is also flat it can be used to paint in greater areas, it's shape also makes it great for shading and blending too.

The angular paint brush is a different take on the flat tip art brush, cut across at an angle making it excellent for coloring areas such as tight corners accurately, as it is a flat paint brush it can also cover greater spaces and the cut off shape is excellent for thecreation of curved shapes.

The fan art brush is a flat art brush that contains an arrangement of bristles spread out in the shape of a fan. The fan paint brush is not as versatile as the other art brushes listed but can be very useful for feathering and shading and aswell as adding texture or instead to smooth textures off.