Product test - Pentel Aquash Water Brush

I have known about this product for some time and finally bought one. The Pentel Aquash Water Brush is a brush pen that combines a nylon brush with a reservoir. I went for the medium one.





The packaging is all in Japanese, so not much to learn from it for me (even if I like very much the beautiful Japanese writing).

There are three models with three nib sizes: fine, medium and broad. The brushes can be bought individually or as a pack of all three models.

Easy to fill-in: Unscrew barrel and fill with water. Screw it back and you are ready. The barrel has a flattened shape that prevents the brush from rolling off your work surface.

The pen-brush is made of a transparent blue plastic and the brush tip is made of soft nylon hair. The brush is extremely light, which is a big plus when you carry around your sketching material.

The point is good and stays pointy. The pen cap means that the point won’t be damaged during transport. It is equally easy to do broad strokes or fine lines. You can hold the pen-brush comfortably like an ordinary pen and move it around with great precision.

What can you use this brush-pen for?

You can fill the barrel with any water-soluble medium, like water-soluble inks, watercolours or gouache and use the brush-pen for calligraphy or painting. It seems ideal for wet on wet techniques.

Trial with watercolour pencils and a black Cretacolor Aquamonolith pen

Personally, I plan to use it for sketching. I will be able to create some washes with my Cretacolor Aquamonolith pens. This pen brush will save me the trouble to have to carry one brush and a bottle of water.

This is a good tool to create washes and blend with watercolour pencils. In this case, you just put water in the barrel. You need to wash the tip with a tissue paper between colours (unless you want to create layers between with two different colours or blend them). The nylon-tipped brush is easy to wash. You just press a little bit on the barrel to wet the tip and wipe it clean on the tissue. One word of caution: if you press the barrel too hard, drops of water will fall from the base of the brush tip (This is a beginner issue and I am sure I will soon get use to this brush-pen and will know the correct pressure to apply). I would therefore recommend not holding the brush over your work when you squeeze the barrel.

For watercolour, I see different possible uses:

• With the barrel full of clear water you can wet areas in a very precise way and then drop some colours in it.



• You can make graded washes by starting with the colour with a normal brush and then switch to the Pentel brush-pen and carry on by diluting the colour on the paper with water.



• You can lift the colour from the paper
  
  

More information

Pentel website
Pentel Europe website

Pentel Aquash Water Brush Art material Watercolour Watercolor Sketching