STOP messing up your Brushes

a list of the most common things that ruin

your

expensive kolinsky stable hair

brushes

and what you should do to make them last longer hello everyone watching squidmart thumbnails i'm emil so you've heard everywhere that kolinsky stable hair

brushes

They are the best brushes for painting

your

miniatures, but you may have realized that Kolinsky hair brushes are five to a hundred times more expensive than synthetic brushes and that may scare you a little from using the brush you just made. buy because painting with and Caring for a stable Kalinski brush is not the same as a synthetic one and the bristles simply do not work the same way when you paint with them.

You might also have noticed that they are much easier to mishandle and much easier to break. I've collected the most common ways people ruin their brushes and it's also kind of a giveback to everyone who backed the kickstarter and now that we've shipped a lot of the brushes we're done with about 75 of the submissions so I really want to make sure everyone who receives them and it's their first brush knows what to do and what not to do with their brushes and if you are interested in purchasing them I put the link in the video description to pre-order and We will start shipping to people buy now when we finish delivering to all the Kickstarter backers, so if you want them to have a link in the video description anyway, let's start talking about chapter 1, what not to do, for the love For God's sake, don't use washes or contrast paints or similar products with your expensive brushes because all of these washes and contrast paint alternatives have a chemistry that breaks the surface tension, meaning the paint will travel from the belly and just leach out. towards the ferrule, this part here and when the paint dries here it pushes the hair of the brush going crazy and that's a sure way to ruin your brushes in a short period of time so if you don't want the hair to break off afterwards after a few uses, do not use contrast paints or washes. with these brushes, use less expensive synthetic brushes for that number two and that's something that really ties into the first one we talked about.

Try not to let the paint run down the brush for longer than the belly. Don't cover this part with paint because as I mentioned that as soon as you start painting here and it dries, your hairs will split because this is the place that gives the brush its shape and if you have paint hairs separating the bristles, you know what what will happen, texture of metallic paints number three. paints and anything in between don't use this with your kolinsky hair, metal flakes or whatever your favorite brand uses to get the reflective shine or any texture, if it's sand, what they have in the texture, the paint is An even faster way to root your brushes. than using contrast paints and washes because these brushes are made with natural hair and imagine taking metal flakes or a bag of sand and just rubbing them into your hair, it will definitely ruin everything you have up there and I'm sorry if you're completely bald, no count on this, another thing is that textured paint and metallic paints are almost impossible to get completely off your brushes, so if you want them to last longer, don't use these number four paints, oils and enamels, it is better to avoid them. using kolinsky hair and it's not mainly because of the paint and the way the paint works with your hair but the things you have to use to clean them and dilute the paint when you use oils you also have to be a little forceful to move . around the paint any way you want and the kolinsky hair isn't made, it used to be blunt, it's kind of the bad field of brushes, so if you're using oils you probably already know this, but use synthetic hair brushes, get a cheaper pack of brushes.

For number five oils and glazes, never, and I mean never, leave your brush upside down in your cup when you're painting. I won't even show it to you as an example because it will directly ruin the brush. With an old brush, do not do this even for a few seconds in the same way that you do not want to when you clean your brush, push it towards the bottom of the glass because again, when you put force on the tip of your brush, it will bend the hairs, it will make the hair splits, this is a mistake I made when I started painting again three years ago.

One of the first brushes I bought I placed upside down in the cup and left it like that for a few minutes. We're doing other things and the brush was pretty much ruined the first day and in general try not to push the tip of the brush against things, don't do it against your table, against your shelf or anything the only time you're going to do is when you gently stipple a brush and you don't use force, just gently push your thumbnail because you don't want to put too much force on the tip of the brush because it's ruining the number of tips. six don't use kolinsky hair brushes for dry brushing again pushing your expensive brush against something forcing the bristles in many different directions bends the hair from the brushes so if you've done it once it's already too late you may the brush can no longer be stored number seven, if you use these types of bottles to paint and you need to collect paint from these bottles, do not use your fancy brush to collect the paint because, again, it is very easy to get the paint to reach this part of the brush and that's something you don't want to have, so use the back of your brush if you don't have a bunch of cheaper brushes or a spatula or whatever, but don't use the front of this brush, please don't do in number eight.

It may seem obvious, but don't let the paint dry on your brush and what I mean by this is that both when you finish painting for the day and when you're painting, I know it can seem like it's a hassle to rinse off the paint. brush every time you paint and the paint starts to dry a little, but don't just add new paint, rinse it before doing so and then add new paint again, a precautionary step that will make your brushes last. much longer, the last one is not mandatory, but it definitely helps your brushes stay fresh for a little longer and that is, don't apply the base coat with your fancy brushes and why that is, there are a couple of reasons for it.

Number one is base coats, you just want to apply as quickly as possible because it's a very time consuming process if you don't, so use a budget synthetic brush, probably a large one, or a dry brush, something that just allows you to paint faster and if you need to get into different nooks and crannies to put paint on, you don't want to bend the brush there and accidentally just dab on a surface where you don't want it to break or something. so having a bunch of inexpensive brushes is almost as important as having an expensive one because it will help you use this one when you really need it and it will keep it cool when you really need it, so that's what not to do .

Let's skip to chapter 2, which is the best: changing your water containers generously, having a water container full of dirty water that is full of pigments and other things that you have used during the day is quite similar to using washes with your miniature because When you rinse your brush, all of these pigments will leach back into the nature of your brush, so if you are painting for longer sessions or if you are using a lot of paint on your brush, be sure to change it once or twice while you are painting so that you always have fresh water.

My secret trick is to always have two bottles of water, especially if I'm painting with metallic paints, I use one bottle for metallic paints and another for the other paints, but I also do this when I paint normally. That's easy when I mess up one of the pots I can use the other one number two every once in a while you get a brush that has split hair and this happens to all brands of brushes sometimes it even happens when you get the brush because All Kolinsky hair brush brands, all the good ones at least, are handmade with only natural hair, so you will get one or two hairs that decide to go their own way, what you have to do is cut these hairs first.

They start to break more things. I like to use a sharp knife and just push the hair in, separate it from the strand and then press it into the ferrule to remove it, but you have to be careful when doing this because you don't. You want to accidentally bend other hairs, you don't want to cut other hairs because it will change the shape of the brush and make the brush work less the way you want, but one or two hairs is fine, just cut them off. away just be careful if you don't have a sharp knife use something else a cutter or whatever just remember to be careful not to bend any other number three hairs when you finish painting for the day it's time to take out As for the brush soaps I've used a few different brands over the years and most of them have worked decently, but my two favorites so far have been da vinci and masterson brush soap, and you don't need to do this every time you change paint, but doing it every day at the end of your painting session or every other day will make your brushes last much longer.

Start by soaking your brush with water and then swirling it around in the brush soap and these brush soaps. They are both a soap and a conditioner so it not only cleans the brush but also re-wets it and ensures the hair bristles last longer so the use is quite simple as mentioned it starts with the wick. brush in a pot of water, then I have two different ways that I like to clean the brush, the first is by rotating the brush from above and what I do next is take an angle of about 80 degrees and start rotating the brush in a The circular motion, this is the way I found that helps clean the brush more and you want to make sure that you don't push the brush down but rather rotate it at a slight angle and this is the way they clean the brushes. when they make them in factories, so I'm pretty sure this is a good way to clean the brush and if you do it right, you'll get lots of different dry pigment bits and lots of different colors. in the lather you have in your soap, if not you're probably using too little water or you're not spinning it enough or you've been keeping your brush too clean for too long and you must start to wonder that maybe not, but you get the point, you may have to repeat this process, rinse a little again, twist it again until you get all the paint out of your brush and when you've done that, I have one more thing I like to do and that is to twist it back, this is the way in which I discovered that it is the best to remove the paint that is higher on the back of the brush and is to almost leave it flat.

Maybe I have it at almost a 45 degree angle and just turn it back on the At the same time I gently press it towards the soap and this way it puts just the dirt from the back of the brush towards the front of the brush and then I can turn it again, rinse it with water and then do the same. and with these two different ways of swirling my brush around in the soap, I've managed to keep my brushes fresh for a long time. All of the Squidmart brushes that I've shown you today are ones that I've been using for a year and three and a half months was the last time I bought a new set of brushes, so as you can see, it's a good way to keep fresh brushes and when I finished the last cleaning step, I rinsed them again with water. and the last thing I do is change the shape of the brush when it's still slightly wet.

I just touch the soap a little bit to get some of that conditioner back in and then I put the brush in my palm and then move it back in the palm to reshape the brush and give it a nice tip and that should be enough for most times, but number four for those times when you need extra heavy things and your brushes seem beyond repair, sometimes you can put them away. with these brush cleaner and restorer products in Sweden unfortunately we don't have many of these available, but the ones that have been recommended to me by other professionals that I trust a lot are the winsor newton brush cleaner and restorer and the other one that Joe has recommended to me Sonya and I can't get any of these here, unfortunately I'm going to order them from overseas to get them at some point, but one works at least decently and these are more solid solutions you can dig into. your bristles are even better at dissolving the paint that dries there and if these steps with a brush restorer and a brush cleaner don't work, sorry, your brushes may not be salvageable, there may be something else, maybe the hairs are Broken o There's too much dried paint on the ferrule that you simply can't save it, but if you've managed to stay clear of what not to do, you shouldn't get to this point unless you've been using your brush for a long time.

A lot of time and even with that it's important to remember, as I mentioned before, that all the brands, all the big brands that make these brushes, whether it's Rafael, Da Vinci, the artists Opus Rosemary and Co Squid, they have more brushes, some of the BrushesThey're just out of luck. because as mentioned they are all handmade by professional people and if that person didn't have one bad brush out of a thousand it will happen that if a kolinsky's hair is stable it is bad the brush could just be bad and you hit something bad . good luck but I hope this gives you some confidence in using them and knowing when not to use them and that you learned something, if you did don't forget to subscribe it's a great way to get more hobby videos every week if you want to support this channel there is a couple of ways you can do it.

I have a patreon where people can donate a few dollars. It is the most stable way to earn income to make these videos every month. Wondering about any of the tools I use in each video? I have them all listed on my website squidmar.com. That's why I want to send a huge thank you to all my top Patreon supporters. This list of people is incredible and I wouldn't do it. being able to run this channel without these massive people thanks to you and with that being said, have a great day bye.