Every oil painter knows that natural bristle paintbrushes are expensive – especially high-quality ones. Bristles that are dense yet soft don’t come cheap.
Step 0: Don’t Make A MessDon’t load your brush with more oil paint than you need. Putting highlights on trees? You don’t need half a tube of paint in your one-inch brush, a little bit on the end of the bristles is enough.
Step 1: Mechanical Cleaning.
After following step 0 and not using more than necessary you should be fine with wiping your brush down on some paper towels. Maybe try to press the bristles together to get out paint that’s deeper inside the brush.
Step 2: Chemical CleaningOnce you’ve removed most of the paint by mechanical means it’s time to clean the inside of your brush. To do this you’ll need something liquid to flush out the remaining paint that’s stuck deep between the bristles.
Step 3 (Optional): Washing Your BrushIf you just need your brushes clean for the next step in your painting you can skip this step. But if you want to put your supplies away for longer than a few hours, you need to give them a deeper cleanse.
Step 4: Drying Your BrushYou should now have a brush that’s clean but still wet. It is important to get it dry before putting it into storage to avoid rot inside the bristles that might damage your tools.
If they can get damaged by cleaning them wrong, simply throwing them into an old shoebox with your other supplies won’t be the best way to take care of your tools.
Short Term StorageIf your next painting session is not too far out – say a few days at the very most – you don’t even need to do the full cleaning process.
Using Brush ConditionerIf you’ve decided to use a brush conditioner: Once you’ve cleaned your brush and dried it off you need to work a little bit of the conditioner into your brush. Simply follow the instructions on the product on how to best apply the conditioner.