What does it mean to dream about paintbrush?
A paintbrush often points to the wish to create or to shape how something is seen, so notice whether the work flowed or the brush failed you.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read the act of making marks and colour as a sublimated outlet for desire and the wish to leave one's stamp. The brush can stand for the urge to create where other wishes are held back.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung might see the paintbrush as a tool for giving form to the inner image, drawing the unconscious into the light. What you paint can show a part of yourself reaching to be seen.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity ties a paintbrush to waking thoughts about creativity, self-expression, and the wish to make something of your own. A blocked or broken brush can echo a real sense of stalled creative work.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
The maker who creates by hand runs through myth as the craftsman whose images come to life and the artist whose work rivals the gods. To shape an image was sometimes to risk shaping fate itself.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Brewer).