STOP messing up your Brushes

a list of the most common things that ruins your expensive kolinsky stable paintbrushes and what you should do to make them last longer [Music] hey everyone you're watching squidmart miniatures i'm emil so you've heard everywhere that kolinsky stable hair brushes are the best brushes to paint your miniatures with but maybe you've realized that kolinsky hair brushes are about five to a hundred times more expensive than synthetic paint brushes and maybe that scares you a little bit from actually using the brush that you just purchased because painting with and taking care of a kalinski stable paintbrush is not the same as a synthetic and the bristles they just don't work the same way when you paint with them might also have noticed that they are way easier to mismanage and way easier to break with that i have collected the most common ways that people ruin their brush and it's also kind of a give back to everyone who backed the kickstarter and now that we have shipped out a lot of the brushes we're done with about 75 of the shipments so i really want to make sure that everyone who gets them and it's their first brush actually know what to do and not to do with their brushes and if you're interested in picking these up i put the link in the video description for a pre-order and we'll start shipping to people who buy now when we finished delivering all of the kickstarter backers so if you want them link in the video description anyway let's start talking chapter 1 the don'ts for the love of god don't use washes or contrast paints or similar products with your expensive brushes because all of these washes and contrast paints alternatives have a chemistry that breaks the surface tension which means that the paint will travel from the belly and just seep up into the ferrule this part here and when the paint dries here it pushes the brush's hair all around going crazy places and that is a surefire way of ruining your brushes in a short amount of time so if you don't want split hairs after just a few uses don't use contrast paints and washes with these brushes use them less expensive synthetic brushes for that number two and that is something that really ties together with the first one we talked about try not to get paint longer down the paintbrush than the belly don't cover this part in paint because as mentioned as soon as you start getting paint in here and it dries your hairs are gonna split because this is the place that gives the shape of the brush and if you have paint hair pushing the bristles apart you know what's gonna happen number three metallic paints texture paints and anything in between that don't use this with your kolinsky hair the metal flakes or whatever your favorite brand is using to get the reflective sheen or whatever texture if it's sand they have in the texture paint is even faster way of rooting your brushes than using contrast paints and washes because these brushes are made with natural hair and just imagine yourself taking metal flakes or a bag of sand and just rubbing it in your hair it's definitely going to ruin whatever you have up there and sorry if you're completely bald you don't count on this one another thing is that texture paint and metallic paints is almost impossible to get completely out of your brushes so if you want them to last longer do not use these paints number four oils and enamels are best to avoid using kolinsky hair and it's mainly not because the paint and the way the paint works with your hair it's because of the things you have to use to clean them and to thin your paint when using oils as well you have to be kind of forceful to move around the paint the way you want it and kolinsky hair is not made used to be forceful it's sort of the bad arena of paintbrushes so if you're using oils you probably know this already but use synthetic hair brushes get yourself a cheaper pack of brushes for oils and enamels number five don't ever and i mean ever leave your brush upside down in your cup when you're painting i'm not even gonna show you as an example because it's gonna ruin the brush directly i'm gonna show you with an old brush don't do this not even for a few seconds the same way you don't want to when you clean your brush push it towards the bottom of the cup because again putting force on the tip of your brush is going to bend hairs it's going to make hair split this is a mistake that i actually made when i started painting again three years ago one of the first brushes i bought i placed them upside down in the cup and left it like that for a few minutes while we're doing other things and the brush was ruined pretty much on the first day and just in general try to not push the tip of the brush against things don't do it against your table against your shelf or anything the only time you're going to do it is when you softly stipple a brush and don't use force just kind of push it gently on your miniature because you don't want to put too much force on the tip of the brush because it's ruining the tips number six do not use kolinsky hair brushes for dry brushing again pushing your expensive brush against thing forcing the bristles in many different directions bends the hair of the brushes so if you've done it once it's already too late the brush might be beyond saving already number seven if you use these type of bottles to paint and you need to pick up paint from these pots don't use your fancy brush to pick up the paint because again it's so easy to get paint to come across this part of the brush and that's something you don't want to have so use the back of your brush if you don't have a bunch of cheaper brushes or a spatula or whatever but don't use the front of this brush please don't do it number eight this might sound like a no-brainer but don't let paint dry in your brush and what i mean with that is both when you're finished painting for the day as well as when you're painting i know it might feel like it's a lot of hassle to rinse your brush between every time you paint and the paint starts drying a bit but don't just add new paint into it rinse it before you do and then add new paint again a precautionary step that's gonna make your brushes last so much longer the last don't is not a must but it definitely helps your brushes stay fresh for quite a bit longer and that is don't do the base coat with your fancy brushes and why is that well there's a couple of reasons for it number one is base coats you just want to get there on as fast as possible because it's a process that takes a lot of time if you don't so use a low budget synthetic brush probably a big one or a dry brush something that just lets you paint faster and that if you need to get into different nooks and crannies to put in paint you don't want to kind of bend your brush in there and accidentally stipple hardly in a surface where you don't want it to split or something so having a bunch of low-cost brushes is almost just as important as having the expensive one because it's going to help you use this one when you actually need it and make it stay fresh for when you actually need it so that's the don'ts let's jump into chapter 2 which is the deuce change your water pots generously having a water pot that's filled with gunky water that's filled with pigments and other things that you've used during the day is quite similar to using washes with your miniature because when you rinse your brush all of these pigments are going to seep back into the feral of your brush so if you're painting for longer sessions or if you're using a lot of paint in your brush make sure to change it once or twice while you're painting so you always have fresh water my secret trick is to always have two pots of water especially if i'm painting with metallics i use one pot for metallic paints and one for the others but i also do this when i paint normally so that i easily when i messed up one of the pots i can just use the other one number two every now and then you get a paintbrush that has a split hair and this happens to every brush brand sometimes it even happens when you get the brush because all of the kolinsky hair brush brands all of the good ones at least are handmade with natural hair only so you're going to get one or two hairs that decides to go its own way what you have to do is to cut these hairs away before they start messing up more stuff i like to use a sharp hobby knife and just push the hair away separate it from the bunch and then press it towards the ferrule to remove it but you have to be careful when you do this because you don't want to accidentally bend other hairs you don't want to cut other hairs away because it's going to change the shape of the brush and it's going to make the brush work less the way you want it but one or two hairs it's fine just cut it away just be careful if you don't have a sharp knife use something else a cutter or whatever just remember to be careful so you don't bend any other hairs number three when you're finished painting for the day it's time to bring out the brush soaps i've used a few different brands throughout the years and most of them have worked decently but my two favorites so far have been the da vinci one and the masterson brush soap and you don't have to do this every time when you change the paint but doing it every day at the end of your painting session or every other day is going to last your brushes a lot longer start off by wicking your brush with water and then spinning it around on the brush soap and these brush soaps are both a soap as well as a conditioner so it doesn't only clean your brush but it also re-moisten it and make sure that the bristles of the hair lasts longer so the usage is quite simple as mentioned you start off by wicking your brush in a pot of water i then have two different ways that i like to clean the brush the first one is by spinning the brush from above and what i do then is i take about an 80 degree angle and start spinning the brush around in a circular motion this is the way that i found helps clean the brush the most and you have to make sure that you don't push the brush down but you actually spin it around with a slight angle and this is the way that they clean the brushes when they make them in the factories so i'm pretty sure that this is a good way to clean your brush and if you do it right you're going to have a lot of different dried pigment bits and a lot of different color stuff coming out in the foam that you have on your soap if not you're probably using too little water or you're not spinning it enough or you've kept your brush too clean for too long and you need to start missing that maybe not but you get the point you might have to repeat this process a bit rinse again spin it around again until you get all of the paint out from your brush and when you've done that i have one extra thing that i like to do and that is to spin it backwards this is the way that i found it's the best to remove paint that's further up the back of the brush and that is to almost lay it flat i maybe have it in a almost 45 degree angle and just spin it backwards at the same time as i'm pressing it gently towards the soap and this way it puts just the dirt from the back of the brush to the front of the brush and then i can spin it up again rinse it in water and then do the same thing and with these two different ways of spinning my brush on the soap i've managed to keep my brushes fresh for a very long time all of the squidmart brushes that i've shown you today are ones that i've been using for between a year and three and a half months was the last time i picked up a new set of brushes so as you see it's a good way of keeping the brushes fresh and when i've done the last sort of cleaning step i rinse it in water again and the last thing i do is i want to reshape the brush when the brush is still slightly moist i just touch it a little bit on the soap to get a little bit of that conditioner back in and then place the brush in my palm and then move it backwards on the palm to reshape the brush and give it a nice tip and that should be enough for most times but number four for those times when you need extra heavy duty stuff and your brushes seem to be beyond repair sometimes you can save them with these products brush cleaners and restorers in sweden unfortunately we don't have a lot of these accessible but the ones that i've been recommended from other professionals that i trust dearly are the winsor newton brush cleaner and restorer and the other one that i've been recommended is joe sonya and none of these i can get here unfortunately i'm going to order them from abroad to get them at some point but one from works decently at least and these are stronger solutions that you can get in further into your bristles that are even better at dissolving the paint that's dried in there and if these steps with a brush restorer and brush cleaner doesn't work i'm sorry your brushes may be beyond saving there might be something else maybe the hairs are broken or there's too much dried paint in the ferrule that it just can't save it but if you've managed to stay out of the don'ts you shouldn't have to come to this point unless you've used your brush for a very long time and even with that it's important to remember as i mentioned earlier that every brand every big brand that makes these brushes whether it's raphael whether it's da vinci whether it's artists opus rosemary and co squid more brushes some of the brushes are just out of luck because as mentioned they are all handmade from professional people and if that person didn't have one bad brush out of a thousand it's going to happen if the hair from one kolinsky is stable is bad the brush might be just bad and you struck some bad luck but i do hope this gives you some confidence in actually using them and to know when not to use them and that you learned something if you did don't forget to subscribe it's a great way of getting more hobby videos every week if you want to support this channel there's a couple of ways you can do that i have a patreon where people can pledge a few dollars it's the most stable way of me getting a income to make these videos every month if you wonder about any of the tools i use in every video i have it all listed on my website squidmar.com with that i want to send out a massive thanks to all of my top patreon supporters this list of people are amazing and i would not be able to run this channel without these people so massive thanks to you and with that said have a great day bye

Channel: Squidmar Miniatures

Views: 741,578

Keywords: warhammer, miniature painting, painting warhammer, age of sigmar, squidmar, warhammer 40k, dungeons & dragons, d&d, how to paint warhammer, space marines, squidmar miniatures, emil nyström, airbrush, vallejo, citadel color, kolinsky sable brush, kolinsky paintbrush, brush restorer, brush soap, brush care, warhammer brush care, windsor & newton, da vinci paint brushes, raphael paint brushes, squidmar paint brush, brush cleaner, clean brushes, how to clean brushes

Id: WCWd1TPHZOw

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020