Here’s your reminder of how to clean paint brushes. These basic steps can be applied other stuff too, like palette knives/palette … just don’t ask me how to get paint out of your clothes!
1 WIPE OFF PAINT from your brush onto a dirty rag or paper towel. Whenever you wipe your brush use a pulling action so that you don’t push paint into the brush & ferrule (the metal part of the brush).
2 USE A SOLVENT to break down the paint. The solvent is water for acrylics or water soluble oils & typically mineral spirit or even an oil medium for oils. It’s best not to use veggie or non-drying oils as it could end up in your painting next time you paint. Wipe the brush on a cleanish rag until it runs clear.
3 WASH IN SOAP+WATER I use masters brush cleaning soap but you can use a mild dish soap or Murphys oil soap. It’s best to wear gloves. Wash the brushes in a separate dish which you wipe with a paper towel & throw that in the trash.
4 REPOINT & DRY the brush on a clean rag/paper towel & let it dry. If there’s a lot of water in the brush dry it hanging downwards so the water runs away from the ferrule.
🌎🌍🌏 Try to avoid washing harmful pigments or the microplastics from acrylics down the drain. Unfortunately you release microplastics into the environment from many things like washing clothes with synthetic fabrics, but if you want to reduce your impact as a painter the best thing to do is to is filter the solids out of your paint water & dispose of them in the solid waste/landfill which tend to have very little runoff into the water supply. One way to do this is to let paint water evaporate & then wipe out the solids but that takes a while so you can also buy kits online to process acrylic paint water like the ‘Crash Paint Solids’ acrylic paint water kit from Golden.
Xtra notes: if you don’t have time to clean oil paint brushes but them in a freezer or leave them submerged in very slow drying oil!