Akashiya Tsuketate Painting Brush, Small

Akashiya Tsuketate Painting Brush in the Small size is a traditional Japanese sumi-e and nihonga brush made in Nara by a brushmaker founded in 1716. The tsuketate (付立) brush is built for the painting technique of the same name: drawing forms not with outlines but with shaded, ink-loaded strokes that carry dark, medium, and light tone within a single press of the bristle.

This is the smaller of the two Tsuketate sizes Akashiya offers, sized for etegami, postcard-scale paintings, smaller flowers in nihonga, and the kind of sumi-e study that fits on a single page of practice paper. The handle measures about 10.5 mm in diameter; the bristle pack is about 38 mm long, slightly firm rather than soft.

The bristles combine horse-tail hair (馬尾毛) for spring and ink capacity with raccoon-dog (狸毛, tanuki) hair for control and durability. Horse tail gives the brush its body and snap; tanuki adds the flexibility that lets the same bristle bundle produce a dark masstone at the base of the stroke and a fading transparent edge as the pressure lifts, which is the gradation that defines the tsuketate technique.

In an Akashiya brush kit this is the workhorse brush that paints the body of a flower or a stalk; the Menso brushes from the same line come in afterward for the fine details that the tsuketate is not built for.

For larger paintings and bigger washes, see the Large Tsuketate size. For the fine-detail brush that pairs with the Tsuketate, see the Weasel Hair Menso Brush (Small) and the Medium. The brush works naturally with Boku-Undo Sumi Ink Watercolors for tonal sumi-e color work.

How to Use

1. Wet the brush in clean water and squeeze out the excess between two fingers; the bristle should be damp, not dripping.
2. Load the tip with the darker tone of ink or paint, then dip the body of the bristle in a lighter wash; one bristle pack now holds two tones.
3. Press the bristle down at the start of the stroke (dark) and lift gradually toward the end (light) to draw a single shaded form.
4. Rinse clean between colors, reshape the tip, and store with the bristle uncovered so it can dry through.

Details

• Bristle: 0.31" D × 1.5" L (0.8 cm D × 3.8 cm L)
• Handle: 0.41" D × 10.6" L (1.05 cm D × 26.8 cm L)
• Weight: 0.46 oz (13 g)
• Materials: horse-tail hair and raccoon-dog (tanuki) hair (bristle)
• Firmness: slightly firm
• Origin: Made in Nara, Japan
• Brand: Akashiya

The Story of Akashiya

Akashiya was founded in 1716 in Nara, the city where Japanese brushmaking has been practiced for over a thousand years and which remains the country's main center for handmade fude (writing brushes). The workshop spent its first two centuries making traditional calligraphy and painting brushes (bristle bundled, glued, and shaped by a single artisan from start to finish), and that one-brush-one-maker discipline is still the standard for every piece in the line today.

Over the past century Akashiya has extended that craft into adjacent territory: the Sai brush pen series, fountain-pen-style brush pens with their own ink reservoirs, watercolor brush pens in traditional Japanese color sets, sumi-e and nihonga brushes for fine detail and broad strokes, and even makeup brushes. The common thread across all of them is the way the tip holds and releases ink, which is the part of brushmaking that takes the longest to learn and is hardest to mechanize.

What you are holding is a small piece of a 300-year continuous practice, made in the place where Japan's brush tradition began.