What is this?

What is this?

Its a brush cleaner!  They sell these things in the art stores for about $4-&7 dollars a pop.  But there's a problem with the ones they sell in the stores, they are way too small.  I should clarify - too small if you paint large paintings, if you use large brushes, if you use many brushes and if you paint daily.  If you don't do the above then I guess they are fine. All the problems listed above originate from a single problem, too much oil paint getting mixed in with the cleaner. The ratio is off.

To get around this, I have tried using a "dirty" jar to use as an initial cleaner, followed by a "clean" jar for a final rinse.  This fails though when you accidently mix the two.  I have seen other artist used larger cans (like the old coffee cans) to increase the ratio of used paint to cleaner.  I often then them used with no scrub element inside though.

What's a scrub element?  It's the wire inside that you can scrub your brush against to get the paint out of the bristles.  It doesn't work to scrub against the bottom of the can because that's where all the sediment is.  Scrubbing on the bottom just makes the cleaner over saturated with paint again, you need something else to scrub against.

The jar you see in my picture is a homemade brush cleaner.  Homemade in the fact that I bought separate items and combined them to make my perfect brush cleaner.  I bought the jar at Hobby Lobby - a local craft store for $2. I could have purchased a larger jar but this is the size that works for me.   The wire inside is scrap wire I had around from making screens for my garden.  A role of this stuff can be expensive ($5-$10) but the roll would probably make 3 dozen jar cleaners or more. 

How does it work?  I paint and paint and paint and then when I am ready to clean my brushes I wipe off excess paint and then use the jar to clean them.  The gamsol inside does get dirty, as you can see in the above picture, but by the next day the particles have settled to the bottom and the jar is ready for more cleaning.  This happens quicker because there is more gamsol in the jar than paint particles - my theory anyways. 

The one thing I know for sure, if you clean your brushes with dirty cleaner there will be paint residue within your bristles.  Go on vacation for a week and you will return to stiff brushes.  Some people can get fanatical about cleaning their brushes with different soaps and conditioners; that's fine but it's not for me. I've been cleaning oil brushes without special soaps for about 15 years now.  This works and I'm good with that.

FYI - I made a second jar and use it for my acrylics too.  

Larry