Cleaning Your Brushes

Don’t spend money on fancy art store soaps and cleaners. Use your art budget for your paints That’s where quality counts. To clean your oil painting brushes, swish them in clean ‘turp’ and rub them over a bar of Ivory soap. (Do not use other soap brands, because they contain perfume, which contains alcohol. That dries out your brushes.)

Repeat this procedure three times. The last time--leave the soap in your brushes, reshape them with your fingers, and let them dry standing up in a jar. Leaving the soap in the brush resizes it. You can also use Murphy’s Oil Soap--but the Ivory soap bar is easier to carry around in your paint box. To clean your acrylic painting brushes, follow the same procedure as above--but use water instead of ‘turp’.