 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're going to talk about keeping your brushes fresh and clean. So I've always said that painting is a wonderful hobby because in the end you only need three things for it, paint, water, and a brush. So if we have one of those three things we should probably take good care of it, especially since some of those brushes that we buy might be quite expensive. So I'm going to show you some simple tips and tricks today that will keep your brushes from doing things like spaying and fraying and basically keep them working as long as possible. Now there are two different types of brushes mainly we deal with in the market, one being synthetic brushes, so those made out of something that isn't natural hair and one being natural hair brushes, the most common being some kind of sable. So for example this is a Raphael 8404 brush, but there are lots of different brands, doesn't really matter which one you use, we're going to talk about how you keep them both clean. So I don't ever have brushes splay, if you've ever had a brush splay out where it just kind of goes bloop at the tip then this first part is for you. So first, avoid getting paint into the ferrule of your brush. So your brush has a tip, it has a belly, and it has a ferrule. When paint gets down in this area and dries, your brush tip is splitting because there is a chunk of paint down here where all the hairs are being forced together and it's forcing them to split apart. So how do we avoid that? Well, what we do is whenever we're using anything that's very, very liquidy, this is our common culprit, okay, washes, inks, stuff like that. I see people use their nice brushes and they open up their pot of shade or whatever, right, and they take their nice brush and they go bloop and they get that. This is the fastest way to ruin an expensive brush, right there, okay? Do not, so one is avoid getting paint down in this area of the brush, meaning if you're going to go into a wash, try to put that wash on a pallet first if you want to use your nice brush, that way you can be more controlled, right? So take it out of here. I know one of the reasons we all like these little pots from GW is because they're so darn convenient. It's not convenient if you're ruining a 10 or 15 or 20 or $25 brush, okay? So take it out of here and put it out onto a pallet or be very careful about working out of the tip and only touch that amount so you get that, so you get that kind of amount in there, right? And perfectly fine and healthy. Same thing with inks and anything like that. Secondary rule when you're working with very wet paints, don't let the paint sit here and dry in the brush. Work, work, rinse your brush. Go back into the paint. Work, work, rinse your brush. Go back. I know it's annoying to rinse your brush, but again, if you want to keep your brushes in good shape, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So properly making sure you don't get that wet paint down in here and those very runny paints, things with a lot of flow aid already built into them, which by the way, contrast paints and the shades from GW have a ton of flow improver in them. That's why they're going down into the recesses. So prevention is your first step. Make sure to keep your paint out of here. Rinse your brush often. Easy. All right, step two, still prevention. Most people have a water cup. I have a water cup. This is my water cup right now. It's kind of gross around the sides. That's just old stuff. Don't worry about it. The water is nice and clean. Most of us just fill our cup with water and we don't think anything more of it. There's nothing wrong with that. However, you can make your water work for you. Instead of just using water or distilled water or whatever, I like to take some surfactant. This happens to be from WarColors. I like to make sure that any time I'm working in my water cup, I take about, maybe let's say five, six drops, something like that, seven drops of surfactant and drop it in there. Then when I swish the water around, see how there's bubbles? Soapy bubbles. The brush is always going to be a little bit more clean then because that surfactant breaks up the paint, stops it from getting down there, makes it activate again. If you don't have surfactant, it's okay. You don't need a special product because chances are somewhere in your house, there is dish soap. You can just put a single drop of your dish soap. Don't put more than that. Dish soap is really strong. So a single drop of dish soap in your water and what that will do is help to keep your brush clean in between. Now, I hear you saying, but will that negatively affect the paint? No. No, it will not because as long as you assumingly kind of wipe your brush regularly, but even if you take water out of your paint cup to thin your paint, it's fine. At best, your paint will flow a little better, but then you do have to be careful not to let it get up into here. But it will honestly make your painting a lot easier and smoother because you have just a tiny little bit of flow improver in every single bit of water you're using. So it actually makes your painting life easier. How about that? So that's our prevention steps. Now let's talk about cures. At the end of every painting session, you should keep some kind of brush cleaner near you. So I have two different kinds here. This is your standard stuff. Most people will tell you to buy the Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver. Keep brushes like new. As you can see, it works on wet oil paint, dry oil paint, watercolor, acrylic stains, everything. My goodness. It has this little old West looking thing on it. It feels like you're selling snake oil. You can see mine's been heavily used. There's also other brands out there. So this is Gentastic Drunken Brush Goop. I like this as well. Both are good. In either case, what you're going to do is you're going to use them about the same. So you get plenty of water in your brush and then you just kind of swirl it around in a circle. Okay. And you draw it to a point, rinse, rinse, rinse. Then you wipe on your paper towel, okay. And then repeat, rinse, rinse, rinse. Just lots of nice circles. Draw it to a point, rinse, wipe, okay. That helps restore the natural oils of the brush, especially if it's a sable brush. It will help keep the bristles nice and soft. You can even, at the end, take a little tiny bit of the wet part of it, kind of run up the side there and just use it to reshape the bristles before they go back, before it goes back on the shelf. That'll keep it having a nice, sharp, fine point for longer, okay. Once you're done there, take a paper towel, wipe out the inside of your soap so you don't leave a bunch of residue and gunk in there. Good to go. It takes a few seconds. I don't do that every time I change paints or anything. I do that, you know, once every day or two, after I'm done working, okay. Now, if you've got some paint that's even deeper in, then you can go to something like this. This is your heavy-duty stuff. So this is Winsor & Newton Brush Cleaner and Restorer, or Dried Acrylic and Oil Color. And this stuff is serious, okay. This stuff is, I have no idea what it's made of, to be completely honest. I don't know that it actually tells anywhere here, but it is very strong. And it will strip the paint right out of a brush. So we take the top off, I'm going to get a brush here that's nice and gross. We'll just get a synthetic brush so I can show you how it works. See how much old gross stuff in there? This is one of my just old dirty brushes. I use it for lots of stuff. Let's take a paper towel. Stick that down in there. Swirl it around a little bit. Let it get all up in those bristles. And then we just wipe it. And you see how immediately I'm getting dirt out of those bristles. See that? Get that nice gross stuff right the heck out of there. Now, this is okay for both synthetics and sable hair brushes, but it is strong. So you want to only be using this on your sables because it will, it does do some work on the natural oils, like it does reduce them some. But you can see how much dirt I've pulled out of there, right? Quite a lot. I could still keep going. This is an old dirty brush. Whatever the case, once you're done, whether it's a synthetic or a sable brush, you then want to take it back to your water. Make sure you rinse it around. And then I go back into the normal brush cleaner you saw here, especially if I'm doing a sable brush, work it around. Just try to get that, try to get that softness back into it. Rinse, rinse, maybe a little bit of that to shape it, right? And that'll help keep it softness in place. So that's if you've got to go heavy duty. Now, if your sable brush is dirtier than that and you can't even get it out with something like this, okay? Then there's not much you can do. But if it's a synthetic brush, you can go farther. When it's a synthetic brush, you can go to something like this. This is 99% isopropyl alcohol. It is very flammable. Please be careful any time you're using something like this. This is, you can use something like 99% isopropyl. You can also use denatured, which is even more flammable, because it's pure alcohol with all water removed. But in any event, you can take some, like if you're trying to clean a synthetic style brush like this and it's got some old stains or deep paint buried in it, you can get out your isopropyl alcohol, put it into an intermediate container. You don't want it to sit in something solid. You wanna put it in something like this, like get yourself a little small container, put that alcohol in there, and then you're just gonna really swoosh the paint around. You can also go with something like acetone. Acetone will, if you use it lightly on a synthetic brush, will not destroy it, but you do have to clean them quite thoroughly afterward. And you need to make sure all of that is rinsed out of your brush. Never put your sable hairs in, well, I shouldn't say now, like, okay, avoid at all costs. Put in your sable air brushes into something like this alcohol and especially into acetone. You will destroy the oils in the brush if you use something like that. At any rate, in any of these cases, when you're using something stronger, I still go for a brush cleaner at the end of it. It's just a nice final step. It's good for just getting all of the sort of gunk out of there and making sure it's nice and clean and that there's something soft keeping the bristle soft. So there you go, that's it. If you follow those steps, what you should get is a bunch of brushes that last you quite a long time. Now, eventually, all brushes are gonna lose their point. They're gonna get worn down because they will lose hairs. The hairs are only in there so well. They're not permanent. You know, they're glued in, but they can come out. It's a bunch of tiny individual little hairs. And no matter how careful you are with cleaning it, what'll happen is over time, your brushes will get shorter and shorter, but they will retain their usefulness. And you can continue to get a nice, long life out of your brushes and use them for a lot, a lot of work for years in the case of a nice stable. I have some stables that, you know, after maybe six months I lose the tip because the tip relies only a few hairs and so I have to be very careful with those. Given the amount I paint, I'll burn through a tip in six months if I'm doing a lot of stippling or something. But I can still keep it and I can get another two years of still solid work out of it as long as I'm not doing anything that requires an ultra fine tip and really precision, which is a lot of different work we do in this, right? So, there you go. That's how you keep your brushes fresh and clean. Remember, prevention is worth a pound of cure. Avoid getting paint down in the ferrule. Rinse your brushes off and keep a little bit of surfic tent or a drop of dish soap or something like that in your water. That'll help keep your water nice and clean and active. It'll help prevent stuff from getting down in here. Once per session or once every couple of days or however you wanna think about it, do try to get your brush through the brush cleaner not only because it's good for, not only because it's good for getting that paint out, but it's also good for just keeping them restored and keeping the natural hair soft. If you've gotta go up farther, like I said, look at something like the brush cleaner and restore from Windsor Newton. It is very potent. It will get anything out of it if you work it out. And if you've got a synthetic, you can go all the way to the nuclear option, which is alcohol or acetone. So, there you go. I hope that helps. I hope you have nice, sharp, clean brushes for years to come. But as always, if you liked this, give it a like. Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. If you've got questions or suggestions for future videos, feel free to drop those down below. I always appreciate it. But as always, I thank you very much for watching this one and we'll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.