Hobby Basics- Clean Your Brushes

Save more money for minis. Clean your brushes, fool!

Sure it sounds simple in theory, but how do you effectively clean your brushes?

There are a ton of cleaning products out there, and I've found very few that actually seem to work without destroying the brush,  or even my hands in the process.

But let's face it, there's better things to spend your money on than buying new brushes constantly!

Recently I heard about something that "supposedly worked" so I gave it a try, and as it turned out it was the product I had been looking for all along!


The cleaner is called "The Masters" Brush Cleaner, and it comes in the container shown here, and also in a bigger version for canvas painters as well.

It's a solid at first, but after you wet your brush and stroke the bristles in the cleaner it becomes soap like and starts to work.

Apparently it also conditions the bristles as well and insulates them against further damage, so it's good to use this product regularly!

Checkout a brush I recently used to basecoat red on my Death Cult Assassins.

Here you can see some residual red paint on the bristles. After awhile of build-up that can really hurt your brush. This is really true for drybrushes especially, as that style of painting lends itself to a quick build-up of paint.  Heck a lot of times the short lives of drybrushes are not beccuase of the technique itself, but because of the damaging effect of paint build-up.

Plus if paint is left on a drybrush, that old color will apply itself to your models when you are using it to paint another color, whether you like it or not.

So I used some of the cleaner on it, and viola the paint is gone!

It's like Magic, well sorta.

You can purchase "The Masters" cleaner on Amazon, as well as locally at stores such as Michaels, Hobby Lobby, AC Moore, etc.


Your brushes will thank you! -MBG

Be sure to checkout my other "Hobby Basics" articles for great tips on the hobby we all love and share here!