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You absolutely don't have to get soap. You can still take good care of your brushes without it.

But getting it is highly advisable. It does wonders for extending the life of your brushes.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Auroch wrote:
Do I really have to use soap? I've heard of brush cleaners before but using ordinary soap sounds a little weird.

If you want the brush to last you have to use something. You can get brush soap from art suppliers.

Ordinary hand soap is a hell of a lot better than just water. If I clean my brush off thoroughly with water a lot of paint will still come out when I clean it with the soap. You notice it when you get paint on your hands, try and wash it off just with water and it'll take a whole lot more scrubbing than if you'd used soap.

However I don't think regular hand soap will do much if you've let the paint fully dry in the brush.

Yeah, for 10 years I just used boring liquid soap (a tiny bit) diluted in water. You are right: it doesn't get stuff out of the ferrule worth ****.

While it's nice to say we shouldn't do this anyhow, sometimes it's unavoidable, such as when you paint using a was or with extra medium, because capillary action just makes the liquid move up.

As soon as you put a dirty brush into a brush cleaner that is good, the paint starts to separate from the brush even if it is old, dried out paint. And besides, brush soaps are very cheap compared to how long they last.

 Talys wrote:
Yeah, for 10 years I just used boring liquid soap (a tiny bit) diluted in water. You are right: it doesn't get stuff out of the ferrule worth ****.

I actually found in the context of hand soap, bars of cheap soap (the aforementioned Imperial Leather) worked better than liquid soap. I'm not sure if it was a chemical difference or simply the act of rubbing the brush in to the soap, but the bar worked a lot better. I just have a piece of soap sitting on the side of my palette next to where I put my paint, so it only takes me a few seconds to clean it off.

I have been meaning to buy an actual brush soap for the past year as I understand they have conditioners and whatnot (my brush still forms a perfect point after a year of use, but it does seem a little bit dry). However I keep forgetting to do it when I'm ordering a bundle of stuff (which I only do every few months). One day I'll get around to it, haha.

 Auroch wrote:
Thanks for all the info guys. I think I'll probably go with the GW brush. I hope it won't break up on me though :S

Best of luck to you, my solicited opinion is apparently "bull gak" to some.
Let us know how it works out.

I started out with GW myself, and now those brushes find themselves in the service of stippling and spreading texture paint since I went to better brushes like W+N and Raphael.

The GW fine detail brush isn't bad at all for convenience in my opinion.