How and Tips on taking care of your paintbrushes

This morning, the first thing I did was to clean my sable brushes. I forgot to clean them the other day since I was rushing out of the house for a deadline. And one of my own personal rules is ALWAYS make time to clean your brushes.

Why?

To prolong the life of your brushes.

Good brushes can make a difference when you paint. I realized that when all this time I was using a cheap round brush bought at local bookstore, and one day I decided to buy one of the cheapest sable watercolor brushes from the local art store.

And the difference? The school grade brushes are limp like a dead cabbage and sheds hair, and the artist grade brush is springy, durable and so wonderful to use.

 Now, the price range of a cheap school grade brush is about 20-50Php each, and the range of an artist grade brush is around 200-500Php - cheapest! I saw that these brushes can go up to 1000+Php each!

This is why we need to take care of our brushes, because good brushes don't come cheap!

HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR BRUSHES

You will need:

1. Water

2. Your "just used" brushes

3. Dishwashing soap (or any liquid soap but I use Joy)

Art stores also sell brush cleaners, and that's more appropriate since it is made for brushes, but I don't have the budget for that, so I am using dish washing soap.

Here's how:

1. Run your brushes with water to remove excess paint.

2. Put a dollop of soap in your hand, lather it to a foam bubbles.

3. Isolate a great deal of soap/bubbles in your palm, and take your brushes and swirl it in one by one, carefully. If your brushes are real dirty, you will see excess pigment in the soap.

4. Rinse your brushes. 

5. Shape your brushes with your fingers to what they used to look like before letting them air dry.

1. When letting your brushes airdry, Never EVER put it upside down with brush tip pointing upwards. Doing this can cause the water to trickle down and be absorbed by all the glue that's holding the hairs of your brush.

So always let it air dry lying down, and better if you can buy those tools that can suspend your brushes with the brush tip pointing downwards.

This also goes when using your brushes. Always use your brushes lying down. Don't prop it up, even when using, because all those water you use while painting will trickle down.

2. If your brushes are old and out of shape, or even if you had the mishap of causing your brush to go out of shape, wet your brushes with water, and simply use a tissue to shape it, and let it dry like that. 

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I hope this helps you prolong those brushes, because a good paintbrush is a good friend and needs a lot of care.

xoxo

Annie