Escoda Prado is a watercolour brush that uses synthetic hair. According to Escoda, the Prado imitates sable hair's colour, spring and absorption of liquids. Don't believe everything you read though.
The hair on the Prado is springy but since it's a synthetic brush, it's not going to hold as much water compared to natural hair brushes.
The brushes that I have above are from the Escoda's Fabio Cembranelli signature set which consist of two flat brushes and a rigger. The full range of shapes are
- Flat
- Rigger
- Round travel
- Round
- Bright
- Filbert
The brushes are all short handle brushes. There's a travel collapsible format for the round brush.
To test the water capacity, I compared the Prado to another synthetic brush, the Escoda Versatil.
Shown at the top are strokes from the Prado. It's quite clear that the Escoda Versatil holds more water. The Prado flat brush is not very practical if you intend to use it for painting large washes. It runs out of water quite quickly. If you want to use it for painting short strokes, well, other flat brushes can do the job as well.
If you look at the side of the brush, you can see the the Versatil's hair will "open" to hold more water.
The rigger performs quite well.
Since the rigger hair is long, it can hold a decent amount of water before it runs dry.
The feeling of painting with the Escoda Prado is similar to painting with any synthetic brush. It's a well constructed brush. Quality is there but it doesn't stand out.
I don't use a lot of synthetic brushes so I can't compare how this performs compared to others. And there is a lot of competition. The two other synthetic brushes from Escoda that I know of are Perla and Versatil.
If you need a synthetic brush, I would recommend Escoda Versatil instead.
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Availability
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