Watercolor Reservoir Liner Brush - A Close Look

Have you ever seen a 2 in 1 kind of brush like this reservoir liner brush? Well, let’s see what it’s all about and put it to the test against one of my favorite round brushes.

Supplies:

Paint: LUKAS Aquarell 1862 Watercolor
Brush(es): Creative Mark’s Mimik Synthetic, round size 6, Creative Mark’s Mimik Synthetic Reservoir Liner Brush, size 6
Paper: Canson cold pressed Watercolor Paper
Jars of water
Paper towel or cotton rag
All of my favorite supplies here

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Buy the Reservoir Liner Brush

One of the annoying things about trying to paint thin lines is that you often run out of paint quickly because the brush is so skinny with only a handful of bristles.

This reservoir liner brush is the answer to those problems because the round body of the brush can hold a lot of water and paint. And the tip of the brush is a liner so that you will get those thin lines without issues. You can even see that the liner part of the brush is a different color.

A close-up of the reservoir liner brush. The brush is resting on a small porcelain cat.

Reservoir Liner Brush Put to the Test

I wanted to do two tests. The first was to see how thin I can really get those lines. Because even with my size 6 round brush, I can get pretty thin lines. And the second test would be to see how much water + paint it can really hold when put up against my round size 6 brush.

TEST #1: THIN LINES

I loaded my brush with the chromium oxide green color and used very light pressure to paint thin lines. As you can see, the lines are so thin that they’re hardly discernible. I just let my hand and wrist glide over the paper, and it created these lines effortlessly.

In these third and fourth columns, I’m using my regular round size 6 brush. And while those lines are still pretty thin, they can’t compare to the reservoir liner brush’s lines. There’s a clear difference!

Now, I know that I can simply use a smaller brush to get thinner lines without having to use a special brush. But, the beauty of the reservoir liner brush is that it can hold just as much paint without having to use a smaller brush. So let’s try that test out!

Test #2: Water and Paint Capacity

Again, I used the chromium oxide green color and loaded up my brushes in the same way. I tried to use the same consistency of mixture to make the test as fair as possible. I filled up two of these scraps of paper before completely running out of paint. Not bad!

Below is the regular round size 6 brush. And you can see that I’m already running out of paint on the first page.

When we compare the two, I noticed one big difference that makes the reservoir liner brush worth getting. I noticed that the paint’s starting value was consistent when using the reservoir liner brush. You can see in the bottom page, it starts with a much darker value and quickly changes value by the third column of squiggly lines.

If you were painting something that requires consistent values, then the reservoir liner brush is the clear choice.