Thrifty Makeovers for Old Brushes
As you'll discover if you shop for brushes, there are a lot to choose from, and everyone has different preferences. It will take some trial and error to find out which ones work for you. If you have a good art supply store in your neighborhood and can afford to buy lots of brushes and experiment, great. However, if you're not in this position, these are some of my ideas for getting more mileage out of your brushes, and making specialty brushes out of old worn-out ones.
These modifications are probably not going to work as well as the real thing, but they should give you an idea of whether or not it's worth purchasing another brush. Please don't go and take your scissors to your nice new brushes. These are ideas for brushes you're ready to throw out anyways...
In my post on brushes for beginners, I mentioned that I do most of my acrylic painting with a few key brushes: a large 1" wide filbert, a 1/2" flat angle shader, a mid-sized round brush, and a tiny round detail brush. These are the workhorses of my brush collection, and now that I know which ones I like, I usually buy several at a time and replace them as they wear out. I buy brushes in the $5-10 range, and replace them about every two months.
I'm going to demonstrate some of my favorite makeover techniques on a few of my old brushes. Here they are, pre-op:
As you can see in the photo, the brushes have some stray bent hairs, and the tips have split ends and don't form nice points. When I paint with them, I get scraggly uneven lines that are hard to control.
Here's what I did:
1) Instant Stipple Brush
I use a stipple brush to polish off excess paint and soften brush strokes. If you have a round brush that has bit the dust, you can try cutting off the pointed end into a flat surface. It will take some trimming to get it right, so make the first cut with your scissors a little longer than you want the brush to be.
2) Makeover for Hairy Brushes
If you have a brush that still has a good tip, but has some stray hairs poking out from the sides, cut them off. If you cut them very close to the ferrule (the metal part) the stubble should be out of the way. Now this brush is a little thinner, but it makes smoother lines and can be used for detail work.
3) Use an Old Flat Brush to Make a Fake Rake
I discovered the rake brush in the last year, and I find it essential for painting fur. It's also great for grass or cloth texture, and the flat shape gives me more control than the more popular fan brush. However, rakes are not very popular in art stores, and it took me a long time to find one (I eventually found them at Michaels). If you think you might like to try a rake brush but can't get a real one, clip some of the bristles off an old flat shader brush. The key is to leave some of the natural bristles and remove others, don't trim the ends. If you want to paint big lines, leave big clumps of bristles. If you want finer lines, leave smaller clumps. Don't worry if it's not perfectly even, you can adjust it later if you detect a problem.
4) Make a Mini Detail "Brush" (Not Pictured)
This is one of my favorite tricks. If you have a brush with a wooden handle, sharpen the handle end with a pencil sharpener. Get a nice fine point, and use it for applying tiny dots of paint, such as the white sparkles in eyes, spots on flowers, or glimmers of light on water. It's not good for making lines, but I've found it can actually work better than a detail brush for dots. You can also use it to apply masking medium (or rubber cement, if you're using that as an alternative) without messing up your brush.
Don't Try This At Home
Now, you other artists reading this blog will probably laugh at some of these stories, but I actually did both these things when I didn't know much about brushes. These modifications seemed like brilliant ideas at the time, but didn't end up like I had envisioned.
1) Don't Change Brush Shape I prefer angular flat brushes to regular flat brushes, but apparently not everyone does, because they're harder to find in stores. I once tried to make an angular brush out of a flat brush by cutting the end of the brush at an angle. It looked good, but as soon as I tried it, I realized why it didn't work. Natural brush bristles have a tapered tip, like your hair, and the taper at the end is what makes the brush tip itself taper to a point. Without the taper, you get a very crude scratchy brush that doesn't make nice lines. With the exception of the stipple brush, all brushes have tapered bristle ends, which is why the above modifications call for removing some hairs and leaving others. Leave the hair ends intact.
2) Don't Bleach Your Brushes I've found that when working with acrylic or watercolor, certain colors will stain your brush bristles (above), no matter how well you wash the brush afterwards. For some reason, all my brushes turn green, and on the white synthetic type that I use, it really shows up. As a young teenager, I once spent my hard-earned babysitting money on some nice synthetic taklon brushes and vowed to take good care of them. I was disappointed that my lovely white brushes turned green after only one painting, and I decided to soak them in a little bleach to get the stain out. I pulled them out of the bleach solution an hour later and the bristles were... gone. All gone. I don't know if this is a phenomenon restricted to synthetic brushes, but since then, I've just washed out my brushes with brush soap and ignored the staining.