Cleaning brushes

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In my experience, the vast majority of people clean their watercolor brushes after finishing painting by rinsing them in water. The paint is water-soluble and most of it disappears by rinsing in water, but not all the paint in the brush can be easily rinsed off. If you care about your brushes and want to extend their life, you should wash them with some cleaning agent.

There are soaps made for this purpose, they can be expensive but don’t have to be, they last a very long time. There is also brush soap in liquid form. Avoid the modern hand soaps, if you use regular soap it should be “natural” made from vegetable oils. Do not use dishwashing liquid.

In Sweden we have a liquid soap called “Såpa”. It is made from pine oil and is used in many homes as a cleaning agent, mainly for floors. It’s an excellent brush cleaner and it’s cheap, maybe there’s a similar plant-based cleaner where you live.

Start by rinsing the brush, do not rub the brush tip against your hand, lay it on its side and roll it against the palm of your hand under running cold or lukewarm water. Then lather the brush with the soap or dip it in a jar of soap. Continue with the rolling motion to clean all the brush hairs, a round brush can be rolled between the fingers (thumb and index finger) so that even the hairs at the base of the brush are soaped up. If you have several brushes to clean, soap them as well.

Use the same technique to rinse the brush in water, be careful to rinse all the soap out. When this is done, the brush should be shaped, try to recreate as fine a tip as possible on your round brush. A flat brush is shaped as flat and square as possible, a good way is to drag it between the fingers.

In the past, you often shaped the brushes with your mouth, you get a better tip and the saliva helps hold the hairs together. Nowadays this is not recommended, probably to avoid paint residue in the mouth, but if you’ve cleaned the brush well and don’t think it’s too disgusting, it’s a great way to shape a round brush.

Place the brushes on a flat surface to dry and then store them, for example, upright in a cup or rolled up in a bamboo brush mat.

If you clean your brushes in this way after each use, you will significantly extend their life. A good brush will last a very long time if you take good care of it.