bad brush, and don't
begrudge an extra ten cents in the buying of a good one. If you are
sorry to have to pay so much for your brushes, then take the more care
of them. Use them well and they will last a long while; then don't
always use the same handful. Break in new ones now and again. Keep a
dozen or two in use, and lay some aside before they are worn out, and
use newer ones. So when at last you cannot use one any more, you have
others of the same kind which will fill its place.

Have all kinds and sizes of brushes. Have a couple of dozen in use,
and a couple of dozen which you are not using, and a couple of dozen
more that have never been used.

What! six dozen?

Well, why not? Every time you paint you look over your brushes and
pick out those which look friendly to what you are going to do. You
want all sorts of brushes. You can't paint all sorts of pictures with
the same kind of brush. Your brush represents your hand. You must give
every kind of touch with it. You want to change sometimes, and you
want a clean brush from time to time. You don't want to feel that you
are limited; that whether you want to or not these four brushes you
must use because they are all you have! You can't paint that way. That
six dozen you will not buy all at once. When you get your first
outfit, get at least a dozen brushes. As you look over the stock and
pick out two or three of this kind, and two or three of that, you will
be astonished to see how many you have--yet you don't know which to
discard. Don't discard any. Buy them all. Then, if you don't paint, it
will not be the fault of your brushes. And from time to time get a
half a dozen which have just struck you as especially good ones, and
quite unconsciously you acquire your six dozen--and even more, I hope!

=Bristle and Sable.=--The brushes suitable for oil painting are of two
kinds,--bristle and sable hair. Of the latter, _red_ sable are the
only ones you should get. They are expensive, but they have a spring
and firmness that the black sable does not have. Camel's hair is out
of the question. Don't get any, if you can only have camel's hair. It
is soft and flabby when used in oil and you can't work well with such
brushes. The same is true of the black sable. But though the red
sables are expensive, you do not need many of them, nor large ones, so
the cost of those you will need is slight.

[Illustration]

The only sables which are in any degree indispensable to you are