Cleaning your brushes.

Thanks Dhee for your great question! I think all artist have had a few brushes ruined from paint especially oil. I have had to replace several for the same reasons and have done research on what is best to keep your brushes great for a long time.

First thing is don't let your brushes stand in the liquid for long periods of time as the hair bristles won't bend back. (I learned the hard way). Next, before you rinse your brushes in ANY liquid, get out excess paint from brush first. I like to either wipe off all the paint I can on newspaper or paper towels. This helps cut down on your cleaning products. After you have wiped off all the excess paint, finally is it time to dip your brushes in cleaner. Oil can not be rinsed out with water, so some sort of solvent like turpentine, mineral spirits etc. Recently, I been using a product from Winsor & Newton called Brush Cleaner & Restorer. I like that product because it has low smell and nontoxic.
Lastly, after you are done painting for the day and have cleaned your brushes than clean them with some liquid soap and water. Do not use hot water as this well make all the hair bristles fall out. (Again I learned the hard way with a brand new brush!)

Of course though you can save yourself all this hassle by buying oil paint that can be used with water! Water based paint. Yes, I was excited to learn that. They have been developing oil paint that you can clean with water. However, the texture, quality, and other factors about paint may be slightly different than oil based paints. It is up to the artist to decide. I have several tubes of oil paint that can be cleaned with water and I haven't noticed any problems but I still use the first method to clean my brushes since I fully haven't switched out the oil based paints yet.

Hope this helps and good luck to all you painters out there :)