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My childhood best friend got me into oil painting. It was a pain to clean the brushes. I remembered using turpentine as a kid to clean the paintbrushes, and it smelled really bad.
This past year when I started to oil paint again, I found a non-toxic method to clean my paintbrushes.
If you’ve taken chemistry, you know that “like dissolves like.”
Unlike acrylic paint, which is water-based and can be removed with water, oil paint is not water-based and cannot be removed with water.
To clean my paintbrushes, I got 3 empty glass jars as seen below.
For jar #1, I filled with a little bit of olive oil.
For jar #2, I filled with half olive oil and half dish soap.
For jar #3, I filled with half dish soap and half water.
I first removed what oil paint I can get off with a paper towel.
I then dip the paintbrush in jar #1. Because “like dissolves like,” the oil paint will mix with the olive oil and therefore take some oil paint off of the paint brush.
