Brushes are the part of a paint by numbers kit people are most likely to ruin, and almost always by accident. The good news is that keeping them usable takes about ninety seconds at the end of a session. The bad news is that several of the rescue tricks that circulate online will finish off a brush faster than neglect would.
One thing to establish first, because it changes everything below. The brushes in a numbered kit are synthetic, not animal hair. Synthetic filament is a plastic, and plastic remembers heat and pressure. Anything hot, and anything that leaves the bristles bent while they dry, causes permanent damage.
Clean as you go, not at the end
This is the habit that matters, and it takes seconds. Every time you change color, rinse the brush in water and then pull it across a folded paper towel until it comes away clean. Not just rinse. A rinsed brush is still carrying water and pigment, and both go straight into the next color.
Do that and the end-of-session clean is trivial, because there is very little left in the brush to remove.
The end-of-session clean
- Wipe off any surface paint on a paper towel first, so you are not putting a loaded brush into water.
- Rinse in lukewarm water, never hot.
- Put a small amount of mild soap in your palm, and work the bristles gently in circles against your hand. Your palm is softer than any container and it lets you feel when the paint has gone.
- Rinse until the water runs clear, then squeeze the bristles gently from the base toward the tip.
- Reshape the tip with your fingers while it is damp. This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that decides whether the brush still has a point next week.
- Lay the brush flat to dry, or stand it bristles up. Never bristles down.
The ferrule is what actually kills brushes
The ferrule is the metal band holding the bristles to the handle. Paint wicks up into the base of the bristles, sits inside there where you cannot see it, and dries. Each session adds a little more, and the hardened wedge pushes the bristles apart from the inside. That is why a brush that still looks clean stops being able to make a fine line.
Two things prevent it. Do not load the brush past halfway up the bristles, and do not push the brush down onto the bottom of the water jar, which drives paint straight up into the ferrule. When you wash, work from the ferrule outward toward the tip rather than scrubbing back into it.
The tricks to ignore
The microwave. There is advice circulating that says to stand brushes in water and vinegar and microwave them for a minute. Do not. The ferrule is metal, metal arcs in a microwave, and this is a genuine fire risk in your kitchen rather than a clever shortcut. It also will not dissolve cured acrylic, so you would be taking the risk for nothing.
Boiling water. Dipping synthetic bristles in boiling water to reshape them does the opposite. Heat softens the filament and the adhesive inside the ferrule, so the bristles splay and the head loosens. Lukewarm is as warm as this ever needs to get.
Solvents. Acetone, nail polish remover and rubbing alcohol will attack the glue holding the brush together and can craze synthetic filament. They are also unnecessary, because the paints in a numbered kit are water-based.
Oils. Olive oil and baby oil turn up in brush-cleaning advice written for oil painters. On a water-based brush they simply leave a residue that goes sticky over time and repels the next load of paint.
If a brush has already dried hard
Be realistic about this. Cured acrylic does not properly redissolve, so a brush that has set solid all the way into the ferrule is generally finished, and no amount of soaking brings it back.
A brush that is stiff but not solid is often recoverable. Stand it in lukewarm soapy water for twenty or thirty minutes, with only the bristles submerged and the handle resting against the rim so nothing is bent. Then work the softened paint out with your fingers, or very gently with an old soft toothbrush moving from the ferrule toward the tip. Reshape while damp and let it dry flat.
Storage
Flat in a drawer, or upright in a jar with the bristles in the air. The image of brushes standing in a jar of water is one of the most persistent bad habits in painting: within an hour the bristles take a permanent bend, and the water swells the wooden handle and lifts the lacquer where it meets the ferrule.
Only wrap a brush once it is completely dry. Wrapping a damp one traps moisture against the ferrule, and damp paper can stick to the bristles.
What to expect from the brushes in a kit
Worth saying plainly. Customers rate the brushes in our kits well, and several have said they are noticeably better than the plastic ones they had before. A handful have also said they found them a little coarse for the very finest detail. Both are fair. They are good working brushes for a numbered canvas, and if you like painting the smallest passages with something finer, a single small round from an art shop is an inexpensive addition rather than a replacement.
If you want the detail-brush version of all this, we go further in our guide to cleaning fine tip brushes, and brush types and what each one is for covers which brush to reach for in the first place. The rest of the working habits are in our nine paint by numbers tips.
When you are ready for the next canvas, the full range of designs is here, and Custom Paint by Numbers works from a photograph of your own.
