What Is a Fitch Mop Brush For?

Brush Shapes

• Art brushes come in a range of shapes that allow artists to work with different media and produce different effects with a brush. Brush shapes include flat, angular, fan, square and highliner. A mop brush shape has a round ferrule -- the part that holds the bristles -- and the bristles are shaped to look like a mop. When the bristles of a mop brush are wet with painting material or water, the bristles taper to a narrow point.

Brush Bristles

• The bristles of a brush hold the material -- water paint, acrylic, ink -- and control how the material is transferred when the brush is used. Brush materials include soft animal hairs, stiff animal hairs and synthetic bristles with varying characteristics. Fitch bristles are the hairs of a polecat, which is a type of European weasel. Fitch is used as a similar, but less expensive alternative to red sable bristles. Red sable is very soft, and brushes made from sable tend to be among the most expensive.

Brush Usage

• The mop brush shape is commonly used in watercolor painting. This brush shape can hold a lot of color or water, making it appropriate for painting or wetting larger areas of a water color painting. A mop should be made of softer, natural bristles, so fitch bristles are appropriate for this brush shape. Mop brushes come in several sizes, and an artist may own several to have the right size brush for a specific painting task.

Considerations

• Since fitch is a less expensive alternative to sable, brush manufacturers may call a fitch brush by different names. Because the fitch hairs are black compared to the reddish brown of sable, the terms black sable or Russian black sable are used to market fitch brushes. A fitch mop brush need not be used exclusively for watercolor painting. The brush could be used for any type of art where large amounts of paint material need to be applied, such as when painting your own ceramics.