Exploring the Stephen Coates Signature Watercolour Brushes by Pro Arte
Since becoming a professional tutor in 2011, I have forged a lovely working relationship with The Pro Arte brush Company in Skipton. I specified a variety of personal design features for a range of brushes and they are now available for you to try yourselves. I still use a selection of “off the shelf “brushes such as the series 103 riggers and series 106 Prolene flat brushes. However, there are many advantages with the brushes I have developed and I’d like to give you a little information about my own “Stephen Coates” signature range.
The Foliater
Obtaining a natural foliage effect has long been a challenge for the watercolour artist. A firm bristle such as hog hair which is used mainly for oil painting brushes, is ideal to produce a textured stippling effect. However, hog hair on its own does not hold water very well so it’s all or nothing! If you punch down a little too hard, all the water shoots out and you end up with a bit of a “splodge”, for want of a better word!
The Foliater is designed with a unique semi-circular ferrule which creates a mushroom shaped profile which is ideal for most types of foliage. Hog bristle is mixed with a finer hair which helps store the water in the brush head and provides much better stippling control. The artist can apply as much or little paint as required. The bristles are also cut back at 45 degrees which allows the brush to be held at a perfectly natural angle. They are available as a small, medium and large or in a set of all three.
The Foliater in action
I always recommend having at least two mixes prepared when using the Foliater. One which is plentiful and quite loose to create the shape of the foliage and others which are much darker and thicker to blend in. The brush is filled with paint and gently stippled.
In this simple practice exercise, I mixed two greens using lemon yellow and ultramarine. One light and loose containing a small amount of ultramarine and the other with more ultramarine and a thicker consistency. I also mixed some ultramarine with burnt umber to create the darker shades. This was the thickest consistency of the three. I started with a full brush of the light green to create the foliage shapes then quickly tapped in a little of the darker green and finished off with the thicker dark shade, all done wet into wet.
In this painting, I created the sky with a large Hake and dried it. All the foreground was completed in profile with a really strong mix of ultramarine and light red, the same as the colour of the clouds. I used a size 6 Spearhead for the tree trunks and branches, a medium Foliater for the foliage on the Acacia trees and a large Scimitar for the foreground grasses.
Large & medium traditional hake
The Hake is a large chisel shaped brush head made with goat hair is bound and then stitched into a wooden slit. Goat hair is extremely fine and has very little spring. This allows the brush head to swell and hold copious levels of water. The artist is then able to cover expansive areas of a painting really quickly.
The Japanese style hake was first popularised by the great Ron Ranson. The hake supplied by Pro Arte and labelled as the “Ron Ranson” is the best one available in my view. The brush head is perfect in hair volume and length. Pro Arte kindly agreed to rebrand the same brush as a “Stephen Coates” signature version and is available as a medium with a width of 3cm (1.18in) and a large with a width of 4.5cm (1.77in).
The Hake in Action
To paint a sky the hake should be used really wet so that the surface of the paper can be covered quickly. Some artists fill the brush with diluted paint and apply it to dry paper. However, my preference is to wet the paper first and then apply much thicker paint across the film of water, which dilutes as it is brushed in. The hake can be energetically swept across from side to side or flicked gently with a turn of the wrist to create smaller individual brush strokes. The chisel shaped brush head makes for great versatility too. Painted strokes can be wide or narrow depending on the orientation of the brush head to the paper.
This painting featuring a rather ambitious sky features the large hake. The clouds are a thick mix of ultramarine and light red which creates a gorgeous plum colour. I wet the paper first, flicked in some patches of cerulean blue leaving random white spaces and then turned in the shape of the clouds with varied intensity of the plum mix. I also used the large hake to paint the sand on the beach with diluted burnt umber and a few blended sweeps of the plum mix.
Mini-Hake
As a long time lover of goat hair and the chisel shaped brush head of the hake, I had a requirement
for something smaller than the traditional hake with a more delicate touch. In collaboration with
Pro Arte, we designed a brush with a sleek traditional handle and a flat metal ferrule which is
altogether more reliable and reduces hair loss. The ferrule also splays out the hair slightly at the sides
which produces a much more sensitive brush tip.
Pro Arte manufactured several prototype versions experimenting with different hair volume and length. Eventually we felt we had it just right, settled on a width of 3/4in (1.9cm) and decided to call it the Mini-Hake. I now use the brush for painting skies on smaller studies up to A4 size and utilise the incredible versatility of the chisel shaped brush head to perform a host of other techniques on all my
paintings.
The Mini-Hake in action
The Mini-Hake performs in a similar way to the larger traditional version but on a smaller scale. It is perfect for skies, and other broad soft washes in a painting.
The Mini-Hake is versatile too enabling narrow zigzag lines and delicate flicking to create reeds.


This atmospheric painting of Lindisfarne in Northumberland is a great example of the true versatility of the brush. The sky, sea, beach and reeds were all created with the Mini-Hake.
The Scimitar
The shape of this unique flattened brush head mimics a scimitar blade. It features a long sweeping curved chamfer which terminates at the tip with almost a single hair. This incredibly fine tip delivers long fine lines perfect for flower stems, grass and reeds. The brush holds huge levels of paint allowing continuous delivery without constantly returning to the palette for a refill. A twist and a turn creates a unique shape with each brush stroke creating fluid organic results. The Scimitar brush is a little unstable when it is full of paint. In fact it is decidedly “wobbly” so not easy to control in the traditional sense. Instead, it is best held towards the end of the handle and stroked gently to produce a multitude of natural shapes.

The brush head was already in production and known as a “Sword liner” but my signature version is made with a much longer handle to allow a more flamboyant and expressive brush stroke. It looks really classy too with a lightwood handle and a faux gold ferrule. Available as a medium and large.
The Scimitar in action
With the large brush head full of paint, the artist can produce continuous brush strokes without constantly returning to the palette. The longer handle allows a more flamboyant, energetic movement and every brush stroke is unique.


In this impressionistic painting of a misty woodland marsh, the Scimitar was used to create all the grasses and reeds in the foreground. This took literally seconds to paint, flicking the brush around quite randomly.
The Spearhead
I have used Pro Arte Prolene synthetic round brushes for many years and of course there is nothing wrong with them at all. Round brushes are generally the watercolour artist’s staple tool and I always had a size 2, 5, 8 and 10 in my kit. But as I became more experienced with watercolours, I saw a need for a round brush with softer hair that would hold more water and possibly something with a sharper tip. I didn’t really want to turn to sable mainly for cost reasons so when I spoke to Pro Arte about my quest to find the right brush, it just so happened that they were in a position to offer a solution!
Pro Arte kindly offered to manufacture a completely new round brush which is made with a new wave synthetic nylon and the brush head mimics the performance of sable at a fraction of the price. The hairs are much finer than those in the Prolene range and are slightly wavy too. This produces a much
softer brush head able to swell and allow in much more more water. Furthermore, the paint flows through the tip onto the paper with ease enhancing the ability of the artist to cover areas more fluidly.
They also created a brand new shape for the brush head which was a little longer and sharper than the Prolene range and finished it off with a really smart looking rosewood handle.
All I needed to do now was come up with a name. I took one look at it and I was immediately reminded of a Spear. So the name “Spearhead” was suggested and it stuck! We didn’t see the need for anything smaller than a size 6 because that would have been in the realm of riggers. So the “Spearhead” is available in a size 6, 8 & 10.
The Spearhead in action

The wonderful water holding capacity of the three Spearhead brushes allows the artist to employ a really delicate touch whilst delivering an abundant flow of paint. Here you can see one brush load of paint being delivered using the number 8 Spearhead.
The number 6 in particular has a really fine point and it is possible to create human figures, narrow lines and even birds!


