How do you clean your brushes?
January 8th, 2007I have been doing pretty well with my New Year’s resolutions: to draw, paint, sculpt and photograph each day. Part of the key is to make the energy barrier for each activity as low as possible. With painting in oil, an important consideration is, how to clean my brushes?
Here is what Cennino Cennini wrote (probably in the 14th century):
. . . have a plate of tin or lead which is one finger deep all around, like a lamp; and keep it half full of oil, and keep your brushes in it when idle, so that they will not dry up.
In Cennino Cennini’s time, artists did not use organic solvents for oil painting. To keep their oil painting brushes from drying up, they stored them in linseed oil. A slight improvement on Cennini’s method is to have the hair of the brush in oil, while the handle remains oil free.
The advantage of storing brushes in linseed oil is that it is easier and faster to clean them. The painter does not need to remove the oil, only the pigment.
How do you clean your brushes?
January 8th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I use a rag to clean the excess paint off the brush first and then use some turpentine to clean up the brush. I then make sure the brush is dry by vigourously shaking it a couple of times and then I store it upright overnight.
Since I always use an extra loaded brush, I will have to go through two turpentine cleanings to make sure my brush is usable the next time around…
January 8th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Karl, I assume you have some way of suspending the brushes so they are not resting on their tips.
I tend to wipe each brush off with a rag, then stir it around in turpentine, then a rag again, as needed. Once all the paint is out of them I wash my brushes in warm water and dishsoap. I also use a wire brush on them, from the ferrule toward the tip, to get out any paint that’s lodged near the base. It’s a trick I learned from housepainters, and it works really well.
Of course these days I’m working in linoleum, not paint, and all I do is replace the exacto blades as they break. I buy them in boxes of 100. I also keep a box of bandaids nearby.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
When I bought Hellman’s spar urethane to paint my window sashes, the salesperson told me not to dry my expensive Chinese brush every day because it is too hard on it.
He suggested that I keep the hair of the brush in paint thinner, suspended by a washing line clip. Only after finishing the job, he said to clean the brush several times in paint thinner, shaking it hard in between, and then to store it dry.
This would be analogous to suspending the brush in linseed oil without letting it dry in between usages.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Karl,
I use really cheap brushes and basically have a fresh one for each color or color family (one for reds, for example). Sometimes I have about 30 brushes going at once. I find when I paint thickly and don’t use a lot of mineral spirits, I can actually wipe the excess paint off and then re-use the brush (the solvent acts to release the pigment into the brush more and actually makes it harder to to just wipe out unless you are thoroughly cleaning the brush). THen at the end of a painting session I clean them all with a bar of soap and warm water. Dish soap works well too. I have heard about that linseed oil way and that sounds good, especially if you have nice brushes you want to maintain really well.
I have a related question – what brands of brushes do people really like? As I said, I like really cheap brushes and tend not to even notice when I have sable versus synthetic nylon. But that’s the kind of brute I am… I don’t use bristle much as it is so rough and tough and I have been painting so small lately.I am interested in people’s experiences of different qualities of brushes and what they do for folks, because maybe I will graduate to Kwality someday =)
January 8th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Hi Karl,
Off the topic question. Is there a way to look at older post other than when you all link to them? It seems like they still exist out there some place beyond recent posts.
Thanks,
PS sometimes I use sand to clean full or tough brushes. Gets off more paint than using a rag.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Evan,
There is lots and lots of good stuff to read on Art & Perception. Right now we do a poor job of making it accessible. I was studying this issue a moment ago. Sooner or later we will improve the site in this respect. If you have been reading along recently, you will know that we are all very busy trying to be artists (and spend minimal time on web design!) Apologies.
For the moment, the best thing is to use the search box in the side bar. For example, if you want to read about photography, type in “photography” and hit the search button. You will get a long list of posts. At the end of the page you can click the “Previous Entries” link and find still more.
If you use sand to clean brushes, you must wear down the brushes very quickly!
January 8th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Leslie,
I think that the solvent allows the oil to penetrate deep into the brush, where you can never really get it out. This is one reason I think it is good to never let oil paint brushes stand in the air. It is not possible to really wash them of oil, and trying to is a lot of work.
I use fine sable brushes — often brushes made for water color — and I like da Vinci the best. To use sable for oil paint requires stiff fibers — Kolinsky sable is supposed to be among the best. These brushes are expensive. Storing them in oil, I can use them for a long long time. They wear down at the tips, but the hairs stay flexible don’t fuse inside the brush ferrule.
For bristle painting, I use some French brushes made from 10 year old hogs. This makes the fibers stiffer.
I find that high quality brushes last longer and give better performance for the work I do. If I care for them, they don’t cost me more than cheap brushes would, but I can do more with them.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Birgit,
Paint thinner is a solvent, so long-term storage of brushes in it might be bad for the brushes. Long term storage in linseed oil does no harm. Also, thinner stinks. But for urethane paint you obviously don’t want to use linseed oil.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
David,
Yes of course, the brushes cannot be stored resting on their tips. One way is to have them on a slope, with the hairs resting in a well of oil. Another method is to tie the brushes together and have a stick longer than the brushes in the bundle, so that the brushes can stand vertically in a bottle without the hairs touching the bottom. Cennino seems to simply have the brushes laying flat in a box of oil, which is not so bad — you just have to wipe off the handle before using. In fact, this method has the advantage that you don’t get linseed oil drying between the wood and the ferrule, since the entire brush is submerged.
Turpentine followed by warm water and dish soap works pretty well, but it is an a lot of work compared to the linseed oil method. The other nice thing about the linseed oil method is that if you are in a hurry, you can just store your brushes without even cleaning them.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Sunil,
I remember always getting a headache cleaning my brushes with turpentine!
As a safety note on the linseed oil method, it is good to note that rags covered with linseed oil can be a fire hazard because linseed oil releases heat as it dries. Under special conditions, this can cause combustion, although I never use that much oil. But to be on the safe side, I always store the waste rags/paper towel in a metal container to avoid the (probably negligible) risk of spontaneous combustion from these items.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Hi Karl,
I hope I didn’t offend you by my question. The site is very good and I enjoy checking in on it. But like you, I don’t have time to keep up with it regularly. So having the search bar helps. I’ll try it out.
About the sand, my wife and I are from the Pacific Northwest. She is very unhappy about any chemcials around the kids. I just use a little bit of sand to help pull excess paint off. The paint adheres to all the surfaces on the sand, then I clean with regular soaps. But I am not a painter really, mostly sculpture. So I don’t have the same worries you folks do.
Peace.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Evan,
No offense taken (I hope I didn’t offend anyone else!) Are you painting your sculpture?
January 8th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
I only was able to paint really fine when I started to use Da Vinci brushes. I clean them with linseed oil and store them in linseed oil.
January 9th, 2007 at 12:34 am
I never heard of the linseed oil method before, neither the sand, but have encountered and used the others (rags, turpentine, thinners, soap). It sounds appealing, less work etc, but doesn’t a skin form on the top of the linseed oil when it’s open to the air?
January 9th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Cennini’s method is one I’ve used for years, but not to his credit. I have a spring suspended above a little bucket so the brushes hang upside down and don’t get bent. I used to wet them and wrap them in saran wrap. That works too.
You can definitely get all the oil and any dried stuff out with acetone however.Dangerous stuff — fumes! But works like a bomb. I also wash the brushes frequently in synthetic, odorless turp and wipe them dry dry dry with a rag while working because linseed oil is NOT what I want any extra of in my paint. It yellows and cracks. Only alkyd mediums will do. Vastly more permanent…
But I follow the acetone treatment with The Master’s Brush Cleaner and shape the brushes with my fingers so they dry with no bristles sticking out. I’ve found that only the finest sables and hog brushes can hold up to the rigorous cleaning.
March 31st, 2007 at 5:50 am
I have always used turpentine, but linseed oil was highly recommended by artist supply store. I bought it and some nice new brushes, then wondered whether it could help me save some old but expensive brushes that I had forgotten to clean after my final year at college? (7 years ago) Of course they were my favourite ones and I refused to throw them out, hoping for a miracle cleaner that would restore them to their original condition. Is it possible linseed oil could be the answer to my prayer. I have quit my day job and am preparing to begin painting again. Any suggestions?