When it comes to painting, the tools of the trade are important and require care to ensure the quality of the application of paint and the durability of said tools. Whether you’ve shelled out minimal cash for your brushes or you splurged and own the best brushes that money can buy, brush cleaning and care is a top priority for any artist.
If you’ve ever picked up a brush and made an attempt to paint when it’s not completely clean you know that the shape and snap of the brush can be negatively affected.
In turn, this can make applying paint to a surface a difficulty. And when paint dries up and gets stuck in the ferrule (the metal part of the brush) it can damage the brush and its ability to apply paint. It’s kind of a big deal to make sure your brushes are as clean as can be between painting sessions. Let’s take a deeper look at cleaning techniques and caring for brushes and talk about best practices for cleaning, restoration, and storage.
Brush Cleaning
Trekell offers Coconut Oil Soap for Water-Based Media because coconut products are natural and contain no harsh chemicals, making them easy but effective on the bristles and giving the user a better experience. Your brushes will go right back to being smooth and soft with the use of this product after painting.
For Oil Paint cleansing, Trekell offers its Linseed Oil Soap. This product doesn’t contain harsh chemicals and cleans brushes used with oil paints easily and thoroughly while lasting a long time and extending the life of your brushes.
If you’re not convinced and/or you like to try before you commit to buying a full-sized product, Trekell offers sample sizes of brush cleaners and restoration products.
Brush Restoration
The Fountain of Youth for brushes. The best way to extend the life of your brushes is to use a brush restorer after you clean them.
This process is the final step to remove any stubborn or undetectable paint and residue from your brush even after a thorough cleaning, which helps keep the bristles soft and pliable and ensures longevity.
Our Brush Restorer puts the shape and snap back in your brush and can be used on synthetic as well as natural bristle brushes.
Storage
Now that you’ve washed your brushes and restored them, you may be ready to take a break from painting for a short or long while. You can absolutely store your brushes, but care should be taken with them when storing just as you took care with cleaning and restoring them. Trekell offers a fantastic brush case that is superb for storing all of your favorite brushes.
It’s made from heavy canvas and will hold up to 15 brushes, making it pretty much the ultimate in brush storage. We’ve been there, done that with leaving our brushes lying around loose or hauling them around without storing them properly and all we can say is we’d rather spend our money on paint, canvas, and travel than buying new brushes because we didn’t take care of ours. Store your brushes neatly and protect them from outside forces, and all will be well in your artistry world.
