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	Saving Paint by Nolan Clark > How many times have you wished you had just a spot more paint to complete the section you are busy painting? I am sure it has been many times, well here is the answer! Your brush can hold a lot more paint than you think, but it only lets you paint with the paint on the surface. The rest stays 'trapped' inside the bristles and you usually end up washing it away when you clean the brush. How do you steal this paint back then? You scrape it out with your palette / painting knife. The problem is if you don't do it correctly you end up pulling the hairs out of your brush, not a good idea. Do it this way and you will save yourself the tears of loosing your favourite brush : Lay your brush down on the palette with the bristles flat against the palette, using your painting / palette knife 'smooth' the excess paint out the bristles. Always ensure that the top of the blade is pointing in the direction of the stroke and not towards you otherwise the blade acts as a chisel and rips your bristles out. The picture below shows the correct way to do it : Don't press hard on the brush, a gentle pressure is more than enough. After you have smoothed the paint out of the one side, remove the paint from the knife so that you start with a clean (empty) knife again. Turn your brush 90 degrees and repeat. Keep doing this until you have cleaned all four sides of the brush. Collect the excess paint you have retreived into one heap - wow that's more paint than you thought! You should also do this before you wash your brush. The turpentine can only 'hold' so much paint before it is saturated so your turpentine will go a lot further then. If you enjoyed these hints & tips, please don't forget to sign our guestbook. If you would like to ask us any questions on these hints & tips, you can post them HERE. We will be delighted to answer them. To ensure that you are notified when new hints & tips are added you can join our mailing list by clicking HERE.

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