Haven't any of you had any professional training at all?

I don't want to steal your thunder Kelly, but this is not Best Practice.

Don't ever put paint thinner into plastic. It will melt most kinds. Why risk a mistake? Old glass salsa jars exist for brush cleaning. label one, put some glass marbles like the flower arranging ones into the bottom to work the brush against. (Plain, not coated with shiny stuff. It'll dissolve) Trying to clean oil based paints out of brushes by just stirring them around doesn't work. If you're desperate a crumpled piece of window screen will work too but it's hard on bristles so this is not a default. Paint thinner is very flammable and an ugly toxin so you want to keep it stingy and the stuff needs to go to Hazardous Waste Disposal. Wipe those brushes really well!

If you're doing fine arts painting go buy a proper brush cleaning pot. A big size one would be good for pro house painters. Solvent sits in it for weeks and it has a sieve to work the bristles over. Paint solids drop below it. The top keeps fumes in and evaporation almost nill over weeks. Minimal exposure, clean brushes. Now wash them! I wash up to thirty brushes a day in the studio; it's just doing the dishes.

Bob Ross Brush Cleaning Products. Fits into cleaning bucket. Convenient handle & tight lid on bucket. Makes the whole brush cleaning process a pleasure Perfect For:. The Bob Ross Wet-on-Wet Technique®. Brush cleaning. Transportation and storage unit for brush bath. Oil brush cleaning. Quick and easy clean up. Artists. Pour the solvent into a container and dip the paint brush into the solvent. Work thinner through the brush bristles, dipping up and down in container several times. Spin the paint brush into a waste area to remove excess thinner and then repeat process with a clean container and clean thinner. Cleaning water-based (latex) paints from your paint brush. In Detail Brush Mate Brush Bucket is ideal for saving time, money and mess. Suitable for storing wet brushes for any length, which allows brushes to be ready for immediate use without cleaning. Prolongs the life of the brush, as well as no bent bristles or rusty ferrules.

Do NOT use a surfactant/ detergent 'soap'. Use a real soap, a chemically designated soap, with oil or fat in it. You can put it on a cellulose sponge and work the brushes across it to work up a lather, or just work them against your palm. If you use bar soap swipe the brushes across it. The soap cuts the oil, and the fat base conditions the bristles.If you wiped out the paint and rinsed in thinner properly there's very little to wash out. More like a post gym shower then wrestling gunk. You don't want paint in a sink drain or on the back patio. Rinse well. If you do this correctly you'll get to wear brushes out instead of throwing them away. And bristles are chosen for this exposure so they'll get better. It's just like washing your hair. Squeeze out the water and shape them, air dry.

This works for synthetic brushes too. Do not leave soap in the bristles as it will contaminate your paint next time and make a bad paint film. As for exotic paints like epoxy? Yes, use nitrile gloves and a respirator! Outside. But if the stuff is hydrocarbon based a fat soap should work too. Acetone on brushes will kill them fast, so make sure thats a really Best Practice. Again- a soap may work better. Most bristles need the conditioning.

If your brushes start to get that gunky icky feeling, soaking them in that inexpensive liquid oil soap from the grocery store (Also best for regular washing after painting) is like a spa treatment. Leave them in for two or three days. It's magic! Paint in the ferules is a ruined brush, but as regular maintenance this is amazing. I have ten year old mongoose thats still sweet. I also paint a lot.

Do not use soap on watercolor brushes. Just rinse.

This is the method professional painters use; It keeps solvent use to an absolute minimum. Reusing a cup or 12 ounces of thinner instead of blowing through gallons of it reduces exposure and that stuff has lead in it. Among other scary things. Don't use it on skin either. Paint'll fall of in 48 hours if soap or olive oil doesn't get rid of it.

Even if you use a thinner only system like the guys who paint cars using industrial paints, a cleaning pot will use less thinner and reduce your chemical exposure. They can be used in series. You can eyeball them at the big online art supply stores, and I shop at industrial supply so don't think they don't interchange. ;-D I'll try to post instructions for the homemade version.

Q.I’ve been painting the inside of our home and find myself with paintbrushes and rollers filled with latex paint (don’t worry, it’s a zero-VOC paint!). I can either 1) wash out all this paint in the sink, which seems to take forever and makes me worried about the water treatment facility; or 2) throw them away, which, wow, seems horribly wasteful.

Suggestions?

Inara
Corvallis, Ore.

A. Dearest Inara,

Did Michelangelo toss his brushes after a hard day at the Sistine Chapel? Did da Vinci chuck his bristles once he had Mona Lisa’s smile just so? I confess I don’t know this for sure, but doubt it. They (or, more likely, one of their lackeys) cleaned their brushes for tomorrow’s works of art, and so should you. Proper care and cleaning will keep your tools in masterpiece-ready shape for years, so it would indeed be wasteful to treat them as short-lived disposables.

Kudos for using zero-VOC (volatile organic compounds) latex paint, Inara: As you already know, latex pain is water-based and therefore not considered toxic, as opposed to oil-based paints. And the zero-VOC side of the equation means it doesn’t spew health-damaging, ozone-creating fumes into your home and the atmosphere, either.

But we can’t let latex paint completely off the hook – it may still harbor biocides to inhibit mildew, acrylics and vinyls, crystalline silica, and various additives and emulsifiers. That means we cannot pour the paint itself down the drain (head over here for more on how to safely dispose of leftovers) and we should be thoughtful about how we dispose of the water we use to wash our painting tools.

That wash water is less worrisome than full-strength paint, but that doesn’t mean you can dump the dirty water on the ground, into a septic system, or anywhere it might wash straight into your friendly neighborhood waterways. Here’s where it gets interesting, though: Some wastewater treatment facilities say it’s OK to send the wash water down the drain for treatment (like Grist’s hometown of Seattle). Others are more exacting with their advice.

A representative from your local Corvallis water treatment facility pointed me to your municipal code, Inara, which prohibits the discharge of anything with dyes or other colors they can’t remove. Paint – basically, a colored dye by nature – falls into this category. So handle it (or at least the first couple of rinses) like you would any other hazardous waste and haul it to your local dropoff center.

Pull it off with the three-bucket cleanup system: First off, get as much paint off of the tools as possible by wiping brushes on the edge of the paint can, or scraping rollers with a 5-in-1 tool to squeeze out the excess Nantucket Dune Taupe and Salmon Sunset Pink. Then, rather than scrubbing your brushes and rollers under a running faucet, clean them in a bucket filled with a small amount of warm, soapy water. (Think dish detergent or hand soap.) Work the paint out of the bristles, then transfer the brush to a second container of clean rinse water. Swish it around, then complete one more rinse in a third bucket. Finally, cover the buckets and take the water down to your hazardous waste collector.

What if your town tells you to dump your wash water down the drain? My take is that it’s better to be safe than sorry when we’re dealing with our watersheds. You can always try this trick: Allow the buckets to settle for 24 hours; when you pour the water out, you should be able to reserve the small amount of paint residue left in the bottom. Save the stuff, let it dry (you may need to mix with kitty litter or sand) and toss it in the household trash.

It’s worth noting, Inara, that oil-based paints require extra solvents to clean. These should always go to the hazardous waste center – not down the drain. When in doubt about what to do, contact your wastewater treatment gurus and ask.

In sum: Is it easier to toss those paint-soaked brushes out with the rest of your project waste as soon as your new hues start drying? Undoubtedly. But just like clothing, dishes, and pillows, your painting tools are dirty – not done for. You’ll just need to take an extra step to protect all those downstream.

Colorfully,
Umbra

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