How To Fix / Reshape Damaged Paint Brush | Artist's Quick Tips

Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel in today's quick artist tip I wanted to share with you how you can restore the point of Your brush and how you can keep and preserve the points of your brush as well So the very first tip that I want to give you before we even get started is that prevention Really is the best treatment when it comes to keeping your brushes like new if you treat your watercolor brushes, right? You'll have them a lifetime or almost a lifetime your acrylic paint brushes not as much But there are some things that you can do to preserve them. So the first tip is Especially if you're working very thickly in watercolor Like you're really digging in there get a lot of pigment a lot of rich saturated color or if you're working in acrylic paint Make sure that you wash those brushes after every use and my second tip is something that I will often do After I've washed my brushes and I use the masters brush cleaner and preserver I will take and get all the water out of the brush and then I will use a small amount of this soap a clean spot on the soap very dry not too wet and I'll run that through the bristles While I'm reshaping it and I'll use that as a soft sizing on my brush in between Uses so and it'll also help to condition the brush and keep it in good shape But today's video is more about How you can restore those points once they've already lost So like we said prevention is the best treatment and the best cure, but sometimes you do lose that point a little bit So, what do you do? Well, the first go-to I always do is I use gum Arabic solution. So step one wash your brush Especially if it's a watercolor brush because sometimes that can be a big part of the problem What will happen is is that? people think you don't have to wash watercolor brushes and you do that pigment can build up and dry in the ferrule of the brush and Cause the bristles to spray to splay out. So by washing it and getting all that pigment out of there you can Effectively help restore a point and I will you'll be surprised how much pigment really will come out of there I'll wash it three or four times gently in that masters brush cleaner Then what I do is I dry the bristles as well as I can you don't want them totally dry But you just want to get all the extra water that you can out of there While shaping the brush into a nice point. This one is a number eight Princeton elite Kalinsky And I've had this brush for years. I love it It's one of my favorites But because I use the arches cold press and sometimes the rough press paper It can wear down that point a little bit It may never be like new but this is definitely gonna help it quite a bit So then open your gum Arabic solution, and if you're using Windsor Newton, this will be a struggle about childproof cap and Then just go ahead and dip that now clean brush right down into the gum Arabic solution Wipe off any excess Close your bottle back up And like I said, you want to make sure this is absolutely clean before you dip it in there and that you've thoroughly rinsed it Okay Now gum Arabic is a natural product and it is the binder in watercolor So it's nothing new to you if you're a water colorist But what this is going to do is it's going to dry very hard and often your brand new brushes come with gum Arabic Already in them to protect them during shipping So here I have a brand new brush and that's what what's it's like hair gel for the hair for the hairs of the brush It will just help to reshape that and then and make sure that you get you know All the extra out of there. You want to make sure that it's wet enough that you can shape it But dry enough That you can get that nice point Make sure you get that nice point on there and then you want to set it to the side and allow it to dry How long well one week is better than one day one month is better than one week leave it as long as you possibly can and this is going to most likely restore the point of your brushes if you Use this practice regularly Last stitch effort if the brush is in really bad shape You can if it's a synthetic brush, okay You like this one. Okay, what you can do is you can get some boiling water Dip the brush bristles of the brush clean bristles into the boiling water For no more than 10 seconds and then pull it straight out. What that will do is it will melt the synthetic bristles which are essentially plastic and It will allow you while it's still hot to reshape them, but I warn you it'll be hot because you put it in boiling water So, please don't burn yourself. And if you do that's not my fault. Sorry But be sure that if you're using that method of the boiling water that it's synthetic bristles only this does not work on Natural hair brushes and you will destroy them So thank you guys so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this quick artist tip if you got value from the video Don't forget to give it a thumbs up subscribe to my channel support the channel and leave me some comments I'd love to have you here. And as always have a great day, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye