How to Clean Paintbrushes: Oil-Based Paint

Video Transcript

"Hi, welcome, my name is Lars Erik Robinson with LarsEr Arts All Around Art-Tainment. I'm a freelance illustrator, an artist, and today we're going to talk about how to clean your brushes which is a very important part at the ending of your paintings to be able to preserve your brushes. I was working with oils, so at the end of it you dip it in your paint thinner, mineral spirits, preferably odor based, they have odorless mineral spirits now. And you dip it in the - you keep dipping your brushes on the bottom, everybody dip them down back and forth, then you take it and try to get to the bottom of the bristles by pushing out with your towel. And by pushing out you're pushing all the cleaner into the bottom of the bristles of the paintbrush. You don't want to go against it because that's going to ruin your brush. You want to go with the stroke of it going outwards, then you also could clean the handle while you're at it here too. When you're done with that you want to soak this in a little bit of a soap water, you can use your regular Dawn or dishwasher soap you have around your house. And you let that sit in there for five, ten minutes, you could also rub it back and forth in this bottle here too. You let it sit in there for a little bit and let it soak and you go onto your next brushes, and if I could repeat it to you guys one more time, try to dip it back and forth in the bottom of the cleaning liquid, which is mineral spirits paint thinner, take it onto your towel pressing down, making sure that you don't go against the bristles, so you keep your bristles, and then push out, push out with your towel. And then they're soaking in here, and then at the end of it they always have bars, they have bars that you can actually rub your brushes onto to clean them. I hope that explains to you guys how to clean your brushes, take care of them, they are costly, so it's an investment for an artist to keep them clean. Thank you so much."