What is a good way to clean brushes?

Most of the time, you should just clean with a fine-arts brand brush cleaner after every painting session. If you use a soap-type cleaner, wet the brush with warm water, and work it on the surface of the soap pat/bar (or drag through a liquid soap like Plaid's Brush Plus or Houston Art's Pink Soap). Always move the brush in one direction, never side-to-side and never pushing against the point of the brush. Depending on the soap, that should generate some lather, but at least work the soap fully into the body of the brush. Leave that on for a minute or so with the brush lying flat, then gently flex the hair just above the ferrule to loosen any paint that dried way up high in the hair and finish the cleaning by rinsing well in warm water, ideally swirling or swishing the brush in a cup of warm water. ALWAYS leaving the brush flat or point down to dry. If you use Master's brush soap, my personal favorite, but applicable in theory to any fatted or glycerine bar soap, put a little more on after cleaning, then twirl the brush slowly and gently against the back of your hand to repoint the hair. The fatted soap will dry in the hair, acting as a moisturizer and sizing.

A lot of people use Winsor & Newton's brush cleaner, but if you consider it, be warned that it will take the paint off the handles if you're not VERY careful, and once on the handles, it will sometimes cause the wood to crack. This is one that you NEVER want to leave the brush point-up even while working with it, or the solvents in the brush cleaner can dissolve the glue inside the ferrule as well as dissolve the paint from the handle. It's excellent, though, for quickly dissolving caked-on dried paint. It doesn't point the brush quite as well as Master's, but there are brands of brush conditioner out there that contain panthenol and starches to do the pointing or you can finish with repointing with a fatted or glycerine soap. If you opt for the Winsor & Newton followed by some other conditioner, rinse well between the cleaner and the conditioner. Alternatively, you can use a good hair conditioner like for human hair, but use sparingly. It's not a good idea to use the Winsor & Newton for intermediate cleaning during a single working day, as the kind of solvents in this cleaner need to dry COMPLETELY before you put the brush into acrylic paint again. The same would be true of any oily solvent cleaner.

In theory, you could use any fatted or glycerine bar soap to clean your brushes, but it won't necessarily be as good at removing paint as the cleaners designed for brushes.

Let me know if you need more info on heavy cleaning or deep conditioning.

Judi Northwood
(Judith is an art instructor and can be reached at art at equusalba dot com with questions or inquiries. She teaches at Gen Con, Origins and Historicon and some local events. Look for her classes on the programs and sign up!)

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