What To Clean Acrylic Paint Brushes With

How to clean an Acrylic paintbrush with "The Masters" brush cleaner.

Video Transcript

Morning class, I'm Will Kemp from will kemp art school, and today I'm going to show you how to clean an acrylic brush properly.
So the first thing you need to do is get most of the paint off your brush to start with. It's always easier to clean it off, just with kitchen roll, to wipe off most of the paint, then we can go into the water.

I use absolutely loads of kitchen roll when I'm working, and you just rub it into it.

You can scrub it quite hard, and often I squeeze the brush together into the kitchen roll…

This really helps to kind of soak out all the pigment pieces that get stuck in here, the bottom of the brush, that what we want to really try and get out.

The real trick is to use a brush cleaner; make sure it's a little bit moist onto the brush. I just work it around into the middle of the pan slightly, and then you just work it into your hand. The lather that is being made starts to bring out all of the red pigment in the brush that you couldn't easily see before.

Again, more kitchen roll.

A bit more water.

And another round with the lather, the brush cleaner, and you can kind of work that in as well.

Once it gets to this level, all I do is run it under the cold tap; keep working that lather through it. Dry it off with the kitchen roll. And then make it into the shape of the brush. This cleaner is a preserver, so if there is a little bit left on it, it doesn't matter. In fact, it will be good for the brush, then leave it on the horizontal.

You don't want to hold it like this (upright) because a little bit of moisture will come down into the bottom of the brush and your brush bristles will splay out, so keep it on the horizontal, leave it to dry and you're ready to go.

Resources

the-masters-brush-cleaner

The Masters brush cleaner: I've found this to be one of the best brush cleaners around, you can use it with Acrylic paint and Oil paint and it can even revive brushes that have hardened on paint. It rocks!

The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver – 2.5oz (75g) Pot