Pollardstown Fen

Just a word of advice, regarding brushes, if you are intending to use Alkyd colours as I am doing now. The paint dries fast, very fast. This means you cannot afford to leave a brush with paint on it for even an hour. I’ve noticed a build-up of hardened paint on the brushes in spite of my thorough attention to cleaning. I now keep the brushes I’m using in contact with White Spirits in a shallow dish if they are to be left for even a few minutes.

At the end of the painting session, after normal rinsing with White Spirits and before washing in soap and water, I massage some ‘baby oil’ into the bristles. This is a mixture of non-drying vegetable oils like coconut oil. I can’t remember where I heard this tip but it would make sense as contact with White Spirits does make the bristles brittle and now I have prolonged contact with this solvent. There is also the advantage of this non-drying oil soaking up into the ferrule and making it more difficult for the Alkyd paint to get in here and harden. Make sure to do the usual soap and water wash afterwards.

I know brushes are expendable items and easily replaced. But I have to say I cringe sometimes when I see how some painters use their brushes. A DIY person doing a bit of house painting knows how this ancient piece of technology works. The angle of the brush leans in the direction of the brushstroke. With a left to right stroke, the brush leans to the right and the paint is drawn off the brush. Going back from right to left and the brush is angled to the left – simples! Not using a brush like this breaks the bristles and the bits that don’t fall off and stick to the surface of the wall/ceiling/painting end up making the brush looking like a bottle brush.

I’m not getting picky for the sake of it. But you can do a multitude things with a cared-for brush and do very little with a bottle brush, except wash bottles. A correctly used brush looks the same after use as it did before. By using the same brush with the same characteristics over a long time you learn and know what it can do. Its the same as what I was saying in a previous post about getting familiar with a particular painting method. “The painting is constructed, based on what you know you can do” applies to brushes as well as to paint and media.

Here is the video of the above painting. See you soon.