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Brushes

When the color has dried inside them and you want to clean them soak them in some spike lavender oil and they will turn immediately soft again as before, then you will finish to clean them in some nut oil. Nut oilis not as appropriate to soften them as the spike lavender one which is clear like water and penetrates and is not as thick as the nut oil. Brush handles are made by those who work with care from porcupine hairs, by some others from fine branches of Turkish wood with which they also make small sticks to rest their hand when they are painting

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Lake and white lead and ceruse are easy to work with some oil, but every kind of azure is difficult. And to make a beautiful azure, one has to lay it not with big strokes of the brush but with fine strokes of the end. Not only for azurite ash and azur from Acre but mainly for enamel azur which has to be very fine, otherwise you will not be able to work with it unless with hard work and you have to mingle it with some turpentine to thicken it and and to mingle it with some white lead. Any azure must not neither be ground nor washed for it loses its color and become pale. But put some of it powdered on your palette and you moisten it bit by bit with some nut oil or turpentine, dip a knife point in some oil and then mix it bit by bit on the said palette