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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.
Next, I dip the paintbrush in jar #2. The oil paint will dissolve with the olive oil and the dish soap and therefore take additional paint off of the paintbrush.
Because soap molecule contains ends that are hydrophilic (loves water) and hydrophobic (fears water), it can be combined with oil, which is hydrophobic, and water, which is hydrophilic.
This is important when I finally dip the paintbrush in jar #3. The small trace of oil paint that was not removed from jar #1 and #2 can more easily be removed now. The dish soap not only dissolves with the water but it also dissolves with oil paint from the paintbrush.
If you oil paint, how do you clean you paintbrush? Do you follow a similar method?
