Best brushes for pastels! Model horse artist pastel brush recommendations
July 3, 2025
Hi there! Welcome, if you're new my name is Irina, and today I wanted to go over my pastel brush collection for customizing model horses! Now, when it comes to pastel brushes you're generally looking at thicker brushes with denser bristles but everything depends on the brand and kind of soft pastels that you are using. Top tip here for anyone who is just starting out I would highly recommend having separate pastel brushes for darker colors and for lighter ones until you get the hang of doing color theory with the pastel powder and not have to deal with overlapping colors on the brush that might seep through. To make the list more easy to navigate, I decided to split the brushes into categories:
PAINT BRUSHES
They are a great option if you can find a good kind. This is in fact the very first kind of brushes I bought because nothing else was available at the time. The green brushes featured bellow are by the brand da Vinci and they have a longer, softer tip which is quite flat. I have two number 6 and one number 4. The red one has a shorter tip which applies the pastels more uniform and can give the nice rich look of the color just by rubbing a little harder. It is by the brand Roublott in a number 4. They all have been a really good and affordable option for me and they helped me with many customs before I was able to upgrade.
THE EXPENSIVE, PROFESSIONAL VERSION
Buy a proper, pastel brush. These brushes are especially designed for the application of soft pastels and they do their job VERY well. I own a pastel brush by da Vinci and it has totally changed the way I work with this medium. I have payed a little over $21 for this one brush, they are pricey. But, this might just be the solution to your pastel problems. This is a number XI brush and the smallest size I could find. It is a bit too big for my 1:24 scale models, however, and due to it's wooden brim around the bristles it is hard to reach the inside of the legs without scratching the paint job of your model. Other then that it is amazing for the body and I was very satisfied with the result when completing my two roan custom model horses. If you have not checked out their post, you can check it out here and see their photoshoot: https://naturefoxes.com/2025/06/21/king-and-duke-my-two-roan-custom-model-horses-schleich-custom-model-horses/
MAKE-UP BRUSHES
The internet was raving about how good make-up brushes were for customizing model horses! But as it always happens with this sort of things ALL the shops I went to had a shortage of make-up brushes 😑 Finally, after I can not tell you how many months I was able to get some a couple weeks ago. The second I tried them I knew what all the fuss was about. They were sooo good! Honestly, I don't know if I stumbled over a pot of gold with this brand or if all make-up brushes are THIS GOOD and I'm just very late to the party, but my oh my, they are my top favorites. They are the Pink Beach Series Eyeshadow brushes. I bought two different packs to get more brushes but here are some of them below.
Thank you for reading! I hope this was helpful!
If you need to contact me for anything, you can do that by emailing me at: contact@naturefoxes.com
