Advice on brush care please

Do NOT rest them brush-down. The best thing is to wash hem out - use a little soap (or for the art-elitists, "brush cleanser"). The gently pull them backwards (handle first, bristles last) through a cloth or tissue - to realign the brush hairs and remove some of the water. The place the brush UP in some form of holder - leave them alone now. For going out, make sure they are dry and roll them into a cloth roll-up (or a canvas one, better as it's stiffer). You CAN put them in wet when you;ve finished outside, but unroll it all to dry when you get home. Things to remember - ♦ bristles down will destroy the brush shape - once bent like that they rarely recover their proper shape ♦ wet brushes sealed away go mouldy - it's OK for short term but they need to dry in the open. ♦ Cheap-arse brushes drop bristles on your work ♦ £300 brushes are for the art-elitist tossers (that last is an opinion only!) With reference to your paint box - that's not in itself a bad idea - if you want to stop them knocking about, try rolling them in something thin, like an old handkerchief (when they are dry).

The brush-down debate is interesting. Drying brushes with the hairs pointing down forms the basis of much advice I have seen and read over the years. The idea is that the water does not run down into the ferule and ruin the brush. I must admit that out of habit I have never stood brushes facing upwards but always leave them lying horizontally to dry. Having said that I have never heard of brushes being ruined by water running back into the ferule. A little while back I was working with a large company on the design of a brush rest which would have worked well and I am sure would have been a commercial success (I still have the design drawings) but the reason it never took off was because the manufacturer insisted that the brushes needed to be slanting downwards when placed in it. (They wanted this feature as they said it was the key to marketing.) This caused a design issue - when the prototype was made the brushes slid downwards. As a result the idea was shelved. The fact that I doubt if many artists would have cared one way or the other about this seemed to escape them - they were so hung up on the premise that water needs to drain away from the ferule.

You can buy a brush roll - a length of canvas with string to hold your brushes in place - useful when you're out and about, and it'll absorb some of the moisture anyway: but be careful the damn' things don't just fall through the string that's supposed to restrain them, or you'll go home with half the brushes you started with. Never, ever leave a brush with its bristles down and resting on anything - you might save the ferrule, but only at the expense of destroying the shape of the brush. The Chinese and Japanese, who know a thing or two about brushes, make ceramic brush rests, on which the brush is rested, its point only slightly elevated, for while you're working; and brush stands from which their brushes hang when not in use - hence the hole drilled into the 'wrong' end of an oriental brush for a piece of twine to hang on a little hook. It is obviously counterintuitively daft to place a sopping wet brush in a jar with its bristles pointing upwards - it'll splay outwards, water will seep into the ferrule causing the wood to split, or rot, or the glue to weaken, and incidentally it'll split the varnish on your handle (this doesn't matter in itself, but better not if you can avoid it). But does anyone do this? Shake the brush dry, which in itself helps the bristles to come together (it's also quite a satisfying action to perform, I find! - always provided you don't inadvertently let go of it and send it flying across the studio, or worse the great outdoors, where it'll get lost in the grass) and if you're going to store it bristle-end up while you're working, squeeze out any excess moisture on a towel. Laying the brush flat (again, when you've shaken out/squeezed out excess moisture) won't hurt it at all, neither will slightly inclining it upwards; it's entirely unnecessary to have a rest sloping downwards - and it doesn't work anyway, because the brush is heavier at the tip, and will roll inexorably forward, thus mis-shaping the hairs). When you've done, and your brushes have dried out, I've found it best to store them standing up in jars or those long round tubes that come with whiskey bottles .... don't cover them up, although a porous brush-wrap shouldn't hurt, but do give them an inspection at least once a week to shake off any dust and repel moth damage (not a problem with synthetics: certainly is with sables). I've been storing brushes this way for 50 years (though not always in whiskey bottle tubes - I didn't start that young) and have only once had a brush nibbled by blasted moths (or it might have been one of my pet rats, now I come to think of it; little swine....).

Hi, David. Never leave your brush standing in the water for any period of time and leave them to dry hanging slightly downwards or horizontally, across the top of your water jar or similar. Make sure the hair of the brush is not in or near any puddles of water, or they will get sucked in, and then into the ferrule (the metal part of the brush that holds hairs together). This might cause the wood of the brush to crack (happened to me with a few of my flats, because I left them leaning downwards in a mostly flat plate). It is pretty easy to ruin brushes if you leave them standing in the water or drying upwards.