List of Painting Tools

Paint brushes and paint scrapers are important tools in painting.

In some ways, the type of painting tools you use with depend on the type of painting you are doing--whether you are painting a wall, painting a craft or a canvas. Still, there's a great deal of overlap between the different types of painting. They all require brushes, a container for the paint and a tarp.

Paint Brushes

Different types of paint brushes exist for different types of painting. Painting a wall requires a wide, flat brush with relatively stiff bristles, in order to cover a wide area. Some brushes meant for walls are not as large as others, and some wall brushes are cut at a diagonal on the end in order to cover narrow crevices in the wall. Artistic paint brushes come in different types and shapes. The tips may be flat, round, filbert (meaning, flat with rounded corners), bright (similar to flat, but with shorter bristles), or fan. Note that different types of mediums require different types of paint brushes--watercolor brushes are softer and more flexible than oil or acrylic brushes.

Protective Tools

Tarps, smocks and masking tape are all tools meant to protect you, your floor or even parts of your wall from the damaging effects of dry paint. In a home environment, putting on a smock and covering your floors with tarps will keep you and your carpets from becoming a mess. Masking tape is used to protect an area of a wall or a canvas from exposure to the paint.

Paint Scrapers and Palette Knives

A paint scraper is a wide, flat metal tool that is primarily used to take old paint flecks off a surface before the new coat of paint is applied. Sand paper is another tool frequently used for this purpose. Palette knives are sometimes used to scrape dry paint off an art palette, but these hand-held knife-shaped tools have another function: They are sometimes used to apply paint to a canvas. Paint applied with a palette knife has a distinctive appearance that some artists utilize in their pieces.

Pans and Jars

Wall painters often use flat, open pans to hold paint. These pans allow painters to use paint rollers (cylindrical shaped sponges that roll paint onto a wall in a fast and even distribution)--by dipping the roller into the pan, the painter can pick up paint evenly and then roll it onto the wall. Jars are used in artistic painting endeavors more than wall painting. Jars are used to hold brushes, to keep clean brushes separate from dirty brushes, and to hold water or turpentine, to thin paint.

References

• Empty Easel: An Artist’s Guide to Oil Painting Brushes and the Paintbrush Types You’ll Need