Last year at Adepticon Raf sat down at the Artis Opus booth for a quick demo of their Series D drybrushes. You’ve probably seen them, they’re a striking white with a unique domed bristle shape and they made waves when they landed on the market. Following that demo Raf bought a brush and reached out to Artis Opus to see if they’d be interested in a more formal review on Goonhammer, which you may have seen a little while back.
From there a new partnership was born.
Over the last few months our team of painters have been putting the entire range of Artis Opus brushes through the paces. We’ve used Series S, Series M, the original Series D, and the Series D range expansion (D+) and have landed on our 5 favorite brushes. This “Goonhammer Essentials” set represents a range of essential brushes to cover all your painting needs and is a great introduction to Artis Opus.
These are the best: brushes guaranteed to make you blend better and edge harder.*
The first brush in this set is a chonky Size 5. This brush is huge—it’s the biggest brush Artis Opus sells—which makes it ultraversatile. It holds a ton of paint and can lay down base coats quickly and smoothly, but the point is so fine that you can go straight into fine details. Rockfish even did his Legions Imperialis tiny tank lenses with this brush, which you can see in the full review.
A size two brush from the M series is next in line. M series brushes are shorter and snappier, which makes them great for pulling fine lines. As a Size 2 it’s perfectly capable of workhorseing it’s way through basecoats, but it’s also a fantastic tool for freehanding. Skails did all the freehand banner in our M Series review with his M2.
For those of you who, like me, are a bit nervous about the idea of tiny lenses and details with a Size 5 chonker we’ve included an S0 in our essentials kit. It has the long bristles that define the S series in a smaller size that can be easier to manage.
Finally we’ve got two drybrushes from the Series D line. The Series D line has brushes from tiny to huge and all work great. The Small can be used to do details like heat scorching or with a little more paint loaded on can be used for some quick blending or edge highlighting of marines. Medium+ is large enough to start working on terrain or vehicles.
The essentials set comes in a latching wooden box with a moisture pad and container of conditioner, used for cleaning and conditioning your new brushes. Inside the box is our irascible mascot Gregbot offering you tips and motivation for painting in his own special way.
Along with the Essentials set you can also pick up a Gregbot texture palette! These are used along side the Artis Opus drybrushes to manage both the moisture and paint level before putting paint on your model. You can find more info on the “moist” brushing technique here. With a friend like Gregbot encouraging you from the side of your painting table, painting has never been easier!
The Drop
You can order your very own Goonhammer Essentials set and Gregbot Texture Palette from Artis Opus now. Alternatively you can get any existing Artis Opus brush set in a Goonhammer branded box!
Brush sets should beginning shipping the week of February 19th, 2024 and are not produced in limited quantities.
*Â not really guaranteed, though they will make it easier if you practice.
