1203 by Patrick on 12/20/01 at 11:11 PM
Re: Cleaning brushes

In Reply to: Cleaning brushes posted by Sigrid W. on 12/10/01 at 7:39 PM:

: Turpentine gives me a bad headache and irritated sinuses. I understand inhaling it in an unventilated room for long periods of time can cause brain , neural and liver damage.My oil painting instructor taught me to pour baby oil on the brushes and wipe them clean with cotton rags.I have been using alkyd medium instead of mixtures of turp, varnish, and oil. I keep an exhaust fan running while I paint and this seems to work fine for me so far.

Hi! I had similar problems until I decided to ignore the purists and try water miscable oils. They are a godsend, and easy to use. I have tried a few, and found that Max oils by Grubacher are the best by far.

I should say that I like a fairly thin oil, which the Max oils certainly are. If you like something firmer, you may prefer the Winton oils by Winsor and Newton, but I find their inferior color concentration to be annoying.

Anyway, the Max oils work very much like regular oils, just use water instead of turp. They also have a water-soluble linseed oil, and a very nice quick-dry medium, and finally a gel alkyd medium. They all clean up with just WARM WATER AND SOAP! Hooray! I hope this helps.