Lengthen the lifetime of your brushes by following these easy cleaning tips.
Oil painting is a fun, rewarding activity, but it can be a hassle to clean up afterward. In order to ensure a long lifetime for your oil brushes, you must clean them thoroughly after each use. Even the slightest traces of oil paint in your brush's bristles can ruin the brush, a costly mistake.
Think Cleanup Before You Paint
Before painting, make sure that you have all of the necessary cleaning materials on hand. Use paint thinner, turpentine or mineral spirits as cleaning agents. All three chemicals are effective, but they vary according to price. Make sure you also have liquid hand soap, paper towels and a small cup or bowl to pour the chemicals into. Having all of these materials ready will make your cleanup quicker and easier.
Wipe Thoroughly
To make cleanup quicker and more effective, use a paper towel to wipe away excess oil paint before using any chemicals. Wrap the paper towel around the base of the brush bristles and pull the paint toward the end of the bristles, squeezing tightly. Repeat several times until the bristles are free of excess paint. You are ready to move on to using a chemical cleaning agent when there are no more clumps of paint on your brush.
Chemical Cleaning
Dip the bristles of the paintbrush into a container of the cleaning agent (turpentine, paint thinner or mineral spirits). The best way to loosen up paint from the paintbrush is to gently run the bristles back and forth along the bottom of the container, as if you are painting it. Repeat the towel-wiping technique to remove paint from the brush.
Hand Soap Stage
Even after using chemicals to clean the bristles of your paintbrush, plain hand soap is the best material to use for the final cleaning stage. Squeeze out a dime-sized amount of hand soap into the palm of your hand and paint the brush back and forth through the soap. You may need to rinse the paintbrush and add more soap several times until the soap no longer changes color.
