Try not to allow paint to dry on the brush hairs
Or the bristles will harden and you'll be soon trying to paint with a stick.

Try not to leave brushes soaking in water
Or they will fray or split. A lot of vigorous rubbing may ruin a finer tip brush like this.

Leave enough time to clean brushes
It's so easy to just leave brushes soaking in water until you come back from some dire emergency you have to attend to, especially if you still have more painting work to do in the same color. But thorough cleaning will extend the life of your brush, and more importantly, get you in the habit of good care, should you upgrade to a finer quality brush one day.

Some people just have the personality that is better meant for the pastel medium if brush cleaning is just too tolling. Hiring an assistant may help; but try to allow enough time for painting as well as in clean up. Some things that come from your brush are so beautiful you never knew you could do, that it is worth a little extra time for your investment.

Use a Brush Cleaning Screen
Bob Ross has a cleaning screen that comes in a bucket, or you can put the same screen in the bottom of a jar, coffee can, potato salad container, or large butter dish... whatever you use to quick-clean your brushes with at your painting area.

Fill the container with water several inches above this screen, and it will help you get paint out of the brushes easier and faster by running the brush over the screen with some pressure back and forth, or in a zig-zag stroke. Paint can get deep inside the center of brush hairs while painting, and a brush screen like this can help get the paint out better, and before it dries in the brush.


Use Brush Cleaner and Preserver
1. This keeps brush hairs from splitting. On the packaging, it says, "Used for oils, acrylics, watercolors, and no need for dangerous thinners solvents, or liquid cleaners." Thoroughly clean all paint out of your brushes first. You could use another liquid soap and warm water (if you haven't used oil paint in your brushes) to clean the brushes after painting for the bulk of cleaning. This saves the brush Cleaner and Preserver, and to be used for the final step.

Make sure to keep using more soap and rinse until absolutely no color comes out in the rinse. Then you know there's no paint to dry in the brush. For fatter and bigger brushes, take real care to get every trace of paint out in the middle where it's harder to get to.

2. Finish by swirling each wet brush in the Cleaner and Preserver compound and work in a little lather or small amount of film. If you see a bit of paint color still come out into the soap, rinse and repeat as necessary until brush is clean. For preserving, you can even leave clear lather on the bristles, shape the brush and let dry on a flat surface, not standing up, to help maintain the natural shape of the brush, like how it comes new. This is the only thing that should be allowed to dry in the brush, not paint, and helps keep the brush shaped until next use. The brush hairs will harden upon drying, similar to the new-brush feel. Shake dry powder off bristles for next use.

Store paintbrushes flat
Make sure to dry paintbrushes resting flat or hanging down. You don't want to stand brushes upright (as always seen in a jar) and have water drip backwards against the flow of the brush hairs. Any remaining soap or water (or color if we didn't do as good a job cleaning the paint out as intended) would back up into the ferrule (the metal ring around the brush used to hold to bristles together) and swell or stiffen it up and that practice would shorten the life of the brush.

Try  to use separate brushes for oils versus acrylics
The solvents used to clean oil paints can act as a repellent to water and water based products; however, this may be different with the water mixable oil colors.

Don't allow paint past the ferrule on the brush?
If you do any impasto work where you get into some really thick paint and use techniques that require paint everywhere, you may have to buy a brush more often.

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