Taking care of your paint brushes

Good watercolour paint brushes are not cheap, so we need to take good care of them. Here are a few things you should avoid doing to increase the life of your brushes, especially the natural fibre ones:

• When done painting, do not leave paint to dry on your brushes.  Some of the paint can be near the ferrule and be more difficult to remove and causes paint brush hairs to be further apart - which means that you'll lose the point of your brushes
• After washing your brushes, do not store them with the point up.  The water will flow down the ferrule and cause the paint bush hairs to spread and the brush will lose its shape.  However, you should reshape your brushes by tapping them to bring them back to a point and then laying them flat.  Never squeeze the water out with your fingers.
• Never leave you brushes sit in a container of water. In addition to bending the brush hairs, the wood of the brush will swell which will likely cause the ferrule to become loose.
• You will likely ruin you brushes if you  use them for acrylic or oil paint since they will not behave the same afterwards
• Never use your brush to apply masking fluid.
• If you are storing your brushes in a sealed container, make sure they are bone dry to avoid mold.
• When travelling with brushes, make sure the bristles are not bend as it may be difficult to re-establish their shape. To reshape the bristles, you can use gum Arabic and let the brush sit for a few days. When time comes to use it, rinse in warm water.
• Be careful when re-wetting very dry paint. This is rough on your bristles. You should first spray dry paint and then stroke it.
• Don't use your good brushes for scrubbing paint off paper or force the hairs back against the ferrule.
• Don't use harsh soap as this may damage the bristles as it removes the natural oils.
• Do not load a brush full of paint and then raise the tip so that the paint runs to the ferrule.

This week's artist find is Son Do

I'm entering an extremely busy period at work and may therefore need to reduce the frequency of this blog to save a few hours per week.

Have a great week,

Danielle