A blister card printed Gesso Brushes with the KeepSmiling roundel, the line High quality nylon wood penholder down the front, and 3 PCS in the corner. The three brushes are stepped flats marked 1", 2" and 3" on natural wooden handles, each stamped Keep Smiling A6085X, with a hanging hole drilled through the end.

Gesso brushes are a separate tool from painting brushes and it is worth knowing why before you buy one. Gesso is a chalky primer that goes on a raw canvas or board before any paint does. It is thick, it is abrasive, and it sets hard — which destroys a good painting brush within a few boards. A gesso brush is built to be sacrificed to that job so your painting brushes never touch it, and the three widths cover a small board, a normal canvas and a large one.

Now the honest part, because we sell two of these. Our other Keep Smiling gesso set is Rs. 795 with cream plastic handles; this one is Rs. 860 with natural wooden handles, and the card calls that a wood penholder. Wood is lighter and better balanced in the hand over a long priming session, and most people simply prefer how it feels. Plastic does one thing better: unsealed wood left standing in a jar of water swells and eventually splits the ferrule off, and plastic does not.

So the choice is genuinely about habit rather than quality. If you wash and dry your brushes when you stop, take the wooden set — it is nicer to work with. If brushes tend to sit in water in your studio until tomorrow, the plastic set at Rs. 795 will outlive it.

The heads are nylon, stated on the card. For gesso that is the right fibre: nylon is stiff enough to push a thick primer into the weave of a canvas rather than laying it on top, and it survives a wash that natural bristle would soften.

Rs. 860 for the three. Wash them out the moment you stop — gesso that sets inside a ferrule cannot be got out again, and a gesso brush is almost always killed by being left rather than by being used.

Why this product is worth considering