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Hi, painting community.

Quick question: What brand of brushes do you use? How about any cleaning solutions or agents, etc?

I have a random assortment of brushes. My Army Painter brushes have grown kinda old, so they aren't very good anymore. And to clean them I use this paste thing by The Pencil Company.

I'd like to know if there are any better brushes out there, so please leave a reply. Thanks!

The brush cleaner stuff by the pencil company is great. Mines not a paste though its like a soap pad in a plastic cup...

I also sometimes use Windsor & newton brush cleaner and restorer bit that's really only useful if I've been using washes and they creep up into the ferrules. Sometimes I used turpentine too, but I'm not sure that really does anything if you aren't using oil paints. But both the turpentine and the brush cleaner restorer are meant for natural hair brushes. I think they might mess up synthetic brushes, and I believe army painter brushes are synthetic. That pencil company stuff is probably the best cleaner to use on synthetic brushes.

Also, Google "brush cleaning jar". A bunch of people make them, its a metal coil in a water jar so you can rub your brush against it when you wet the brush and it pretty much cleans it out then and there. You don't have to jab the bottom of the jar with the brush which A- can damage the hairs and B- can just pick up more paint sediments that have settled at the bottom and make your brush even dirtier.

Choice cleaner (for me): Isopropyl Alcohol (also known as IPA or Isopropanol) .

It destroys acrylic paint and is really good for cleaning brushes and also as a (rather expensive) paint stripper. It only needs to soak for a few minutes!

I forgot to answer your question about brushes Lol. That's really personal preference. I like da Vinci and Raphael, but I use them for different purposes. I also have winsor and newton brushes but I don't use them so much, they come in handy for fine detail since they can stay a little pointier but they don't hold as much paint. The brush I use the most is da Vinci size 3. And for metallics I use Princeton (since I thin them with alcohol and your not supposed to use alcohol with kolinsky hair, but I'm not sure what happens if you do, but I don't want to learn because kolinsky brushes cost more) I have a whole bunch of different brushes including 2 or 3 5$ bags of bargain Walmart brushes for things like dry brushing or flocking bases.

Brushes ..Brands I cannot say which brands are best ..
I can say which types tho these go down in price and quality the lower on the list you go

Kolinsky sable-hair or Sabeline (ox hair) rounds for fine detail (3/0 to 2)
Hog Hair Flat for Drybrushing (0-2)
Taklon (extruded ployester) for General use (3/0 - 4)

Nylon Go cheap for Disposable brushes not reccommended for painting ..fine for gluing and flocking etc..

 boobah wrote:
since I thin them with alcohol and you're not supposed to use alcohol with kolinsky hair

Do you have a solid source for that? I know Vallejo claims their alcohol-based cleaner (for use with their Liquid Metals paints) is safe for Kolinsky brushes. I Googled a bit but only saw a couple of hearsay posts on mini-painting fora like this one.

edit: As for brushes, I'm fortunate enough not to need to worry too much about spending an extra $5-$10 on a brush, so I've mostly just used W&N brushes and been very happy with them. But in an effort to be a bit more frugal (and to have some brushes for my kids), I recently ordered some of Dick Blick's Economy Golden Taklon brushes. They seem like quite usable brushes for general work and only cost $1-$2 in the 3/0-4 size range. Some needed a bit of trimming and I had to cut the ends of the long handles off, but the point and paint control seem fine for most purposes. But I've only been using them this past week, so I have no idea how well they'll hold up in the long run.

I use Kolinsky red sable from my local hobby shop. Not as stiff or as sharp a point as I'd like, but far better than anything I used to get at Michaels. I've also discovered The Masters artist soap. It's nothing short of amazing. Cleaned up my gunked up drybrush, and another I didn't know had paint on it. All after using a jar of liquid brush cleaner. Helps reshape them too.

http://www.dickblick.com/products/the-masters-artists-hand-soap/#photos

 Badger_Bhoy wrote:
I use Kolinsky red sable from my local hobby shop. Not as stiff or as sharp a point as I'd like, but far better than anything I used to get at Michaels. I've also discovered The Masters artist soap. It's nothing short of amazing. Cleaned up my gunked up drybrush, and another I didn't know had paint on it. All after using a jar of liquid brush cleaner. Helps reshape them too.

http://www.dickblick.com/products/the-masters-artists-hand-soap/#photos

That's the stuff made by the pencil company

tppytel wrote:

 boobah wrote:
since I thin them with alcohol and you're not supposed to use alcohol with kolinsky hair

Do you have a solid source for that? I know Vallejo claims their alcohol-based cleaner (for use with their Liquid Metals paints) is safe for Kolinsky brushes. I Googled a bit but onIy saw a couple of hearsay posts on mini-painting fora like this one.

No, I don't have a solid source for that. More than likely the same thing you read. So it's probably fine. I have one brush that I used some alcohol based thinner with that never came to a point again afterward, and it could have been any number of reasons why, but I haven't had another problem like that when I stopped using kolinsky with alcohol. But that's just my own anecdote, so I will freely admit that I made my own hearsay post on the topic.
(But I'll stick to synthetics when I use alcohol for my part)

...

(I recognize my error and will be sure to correct it)

Rosemary and Co Series 33, Or Windsor and Newton Series 7 brushes for most work, Rosemary and Co Masters Choice for drybrushing.
Cleaner is a generic brand brush soap from Ken Bromley Art supplies, comparible to Masters Brush soap; some solid, water soluble natrual soap in a plastic pot with a screw on lid. Works just fine

Edit someone suggetsed IPA as brush cleaner. I would keep this in reserve as the 'big guns' for totally ruined brushes with paint all gummed in the ferrule (I'm sure we've all seen some of these), Try to use softer alternatives first, particularly on natrual hair brushes as alcohol or other harsh solvents will dry the bristles out and cause them to become brittle and eventually breaking. - obviously some paints do call for the use of it, I would suggets using some preserver afterwards to minimise on damage form the solvent.

I don't have a preference for brushes, because I'm still using my first set of budget brushes. (Except my drybrushes, which I currently prefer GW Medium).

For brush cleaner, I love The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver.