Do's and Don'ts for Long Lasting Watercolor Brushes

Hello friend, in this video I am going to share with you the dos and don'ts of cleaning your

watercolor

brushes

. This is a very popular question for people who are just starting out with

watercolor

or maybe are noticing that their

brushes

don't last

long

or get damaged, all that kind of stuff that I even see with people who are more advanced painters doing some of this stuff. which I'm not going to mention in this video, so if you want to know how to take care of your brushes so that they last you many, many, many, many years, then let's dive into my first note about brush tips: never leave the tip of the brush brush or loose hair in your cup of water or on any surface, tip down, you just can't put the brush on a table, that would be magic, but never leave the brush tip down in a glass of water .

The reason for this is obviously if it will only be there for a few seconds. that should be fine, but the reason for this is that you never want to break the hair of your brush this way because then it will damage the shape of the brush, especially if you are using something other than a scrub brush, it's okay if it gets a little frayed and damaged, but your round brushes, your flat brushes, everything, especially if it's a specific shape like your round brushes, you want to make sure you always place them horizontally and flat when not in use and we.

We'll talk about why horizontal and not vertical like this in a mug in a second, so instead of leaving the brush in the glass of water when you're not using it, tilt it down like this or with your hair down like this, just place it on paper. towel around your desk while you are not using it, maybe you are using another brush or went to the bathroom quickly or went to get a snack, just leave it on your table so as not to damage the hair of the brush, my second, never do this advice Obviously we get lazy, obviously we all make mistakes, so I'm not going to come up there and slap your wrist, that's not too aggressive.

You get the point, my second one is not when you go to, let's say, wash your brush in your cup of water, try not to put the ferrule in too much, which is this metal piece of the brush, dipped, dipped, fused, dipped, dipped, submerged, submerged in water. The reason for this is that it is made of wood. Handle for these Princeton Heritage printed brushes, there are some with plastic handles, most of the brushes are wooden, although this is the ferrule and inside the ferrule there is glue and that glue obviously adheres to the wooden part of the handle, but it also holds the hair. the brush and if you leave the splint soaked in water for too

long

the glue will loosen and therefore you will get a lot of hairs that will start to loosen and fall out, some of those hairs will become really loose and start falling out on your paint and if this has ever happened to you, it's really annoying to have to pinch like a little hermit crab pinch the hair of your paint and it's a mess, it gets messy.

It messes up your paint, sometimes you don't even notice it and the hair dries in your paint and you're like shit, so try to avoid getting this wild part too wet for too long because it will damage the glue and loosen the hair. of your brush and it will start to fall off, which is sad. My third won't be when you end up needing to wash your brushes, which is a great tip, always wash your brush after you're done using it, so if you're done painting for the day or painting for a few hours or whatever you want .

Make sure you wash the hair off your brush if the pigment gets stuck there and hardens and that's another way to wear down your hair. of your brush and it also alters the shape of the brush, makes it fray and all this annoying crunchy stuff, so you want to make sure you clean your brush after every use and I'll show you exactly how I clean it. My brushes after each use in a second, but every time you finish washing the brush you have to make sure it never dries like that, which is why many painters have cups for their brushes on their desk or whatever that looks super cute and pretty.

I have them on my desk myself, but I make sure my brush is completely dry before I put it in my cup with the tip facing up because if I do that while it's still damp or while it's still wet, water will start to get into the . glue and on the ferrule of the brush which as I mentioned in the previous tip will start to loosen the glue and the hair will start to fall out and that is annoying so don't store the brushes upright while they are still wet, just place them on your table horizontally to dry and then when it's dry you can put it in your cute little cup on your desk.

Another little perk I see a lot of people do when traveling with their brushes is that they just throw them away. in a pencil or brush case that is too small or not protective, so if you have new brushes, I highly recommend that you save these plastic covers that surround the brush hair so that if you plan to travel with your brushes you can place this small plastic cover around your brush when it is completely dry. You don't want to put it on when it's wet because it's going to start to get moldy on the ferrule of the brush, um if that's the case. or this plastic piece is left on for a long time, so if you travel with your brushes I recommend that you keep these plastic pieces that you get when you buy new brushes so that you don't know if you have them in a pencil case, so they don't It likes to get stuck, move and get stuck against the hair of the brush and start to damage the shape of the brush, so make sure you put it on first, if not, there are amazing brush cases out there. which have actual holders for your brushes so they don't move around and keep them flat, so check out one of those holders or make sure you keep those plastic covers to prevent them from getting damaged when you pack them up and go out to paint or Pack them up for traveling and painting somewhere below.

I'm going to show you how I wash or clean my brushes, so when I'm ready to wash them, I want to make sure I get most of the paint off my brush. I just wipe it off with my paper towel next to my paddle or wherever my paper towel is and then I just use a cup of water. Some painters use, what am I saying, soap and I put it under the faucet in a sink, but I don't. T and they have managed to live with me for several years and survive, and I know a lot of illustrators do this too, or other artists do it too, so I just wash it until I get all the pigment off.

I don't tap my brush on the bottom of the glass too much because, again, you don't want to break it and damage the brush hair, but since the hair on most watercolor brushes is very flexible, you should be fine with a couple of strokes and then again making sure that I'm not submerging my brush barrel too long so I can go down there and everything will be totally fine, but I don't want it to be like that for a few minutes, so I'm going to wash it until it's totally clean and I'll run it over the edge of my cup to get rid of the drips and then dry it with a paper towel so it's damp. and I'm rolling it instead of rubbing it or pushing it because I want to pick up all the stray hairs that are maybe a little damaged or I was being a little rough with my brush while I was painting so I'm just rolling it. so you get those straight hairs in and it starts to really form or you bring the brush back to its original shape and I take my thumb and my index finger and I bring it back to where it looked when you first bought the brush. because if we let it dry, it might dry crooked, it might dry, you know, a little bent, so this just ensures that when we use it tomorrow or in a few hours it will have its fine point and be ready. to paint it and then like I mentioned before we're going to lay it flat on our table before leaving it sitting like that because we don't want water to get into the glue inside our ferrule which damages the hair and the brush ferrule is another bonus tip , so let's say you have a brush that has frayed, frayed hairs, spraying everywhere like that, maybe you left it in your glass of water upside down too long or you just didn't.

If you don't know how to care for your brushes, you can potentially save them by getting boiling water and rolling the brush or dipping the damaged brush into the boiling water and then doing exactly what I showed you to shape the brush. it doesn't save all brushes but it has the potential to save your brush so definitely give it a try and if your hairs start falling out then that's when I would move on to another brush maybe buy another one because that just gets really annoying that means the glue inside the ferrule is damaged and you literally can't take the ferrule off and put more glue in there unless you really go crazy with it, that's when I would recommend buying a new brush, but if it's like a little loose hair or a couple of loose hairs and it's not a full spray brush.

You could try to save it very carefully and delicately by simply trimming that little hair. That's not my favorite activity. I usually just shop. a new brush and use a frayed or damaged brush like this one for any kind of rough texture that you're adding to a landscape or some bushes or something so that they can still be used but they just won't be able to be used for things that you loved them for, like leaves and petals and all that kind of stuff, so you want to make sure you're cleaning your brushes properly, storing them properly, returning them to their original shape after each use, and cleaning them after each use.

I hope the video was helpful in showing you what you should and shouldn't. Let me know what you were doing, let me know in the comments below which tip you found most helpful or maybe you were doing something that you didn't at all think was damaging your brushes. What I showed you was that I was potentially harming them. Let me know in the comments below and keep in mind that I've had these brushes for about eight years if you take good care of them. If you clean them properly and avoid that debris that I showed you, you could have them for a long time, so you will spend the money up front, but they should last you for many years, so take good care of your brushes, clean them properly if you want to see what brushes I use and what do I recommend, we have a video where I show you exactly what I use, why I use it, my favorite things about them and I also include the links to those brushes if you want to purchase them yourself.

I'm sure you'll check it out and I'll see you in the next video.