Paint Puck: Review

First things first, I have not been paid or given this product to review. I spent my own money on purchasing them. Now for the review.

“Okay, so what is a Paint Puck?”

They are a silicone puck that goes inside your rinse cup. Paint Pucks are designed to get more paint out of your brush than other methods of rinsing. This can include using a grate or coil, rubbing the brush against the side or bottom of your cup, or even nothing at all.

They claim to save time, water, and brushes. But more on that later on.

They look like this:

 

I was skeptical at first but kept seeing them on Instagram and decided I should try them out for myself. It made the most sense to me to just buy a pack of 5 instead of several individual ones.

“These don’t look like they’d fit in my rinse cup, how big are they?”

The ones that I bought are 1 inch high and 2.25 inches wide. They fit nicely inside most cups that I’ve tried. For comparison here is one stuck to a standard coffee cup. These are on the outside for photo purposes, it’s hard to see from the inside with a camera.

 

They also make Mini Pucks for oil painters that are no larger than a US quarter. More on that in a bit.

“You said they get more paint out of your brush. How does that work?”

First it uses a suction cup on the back to stick to the wall or bottom of your rinse cup to keep it stable while in use. Then you take your brush that you are ready to rinse and rub it over the nubs and grooves and it takes out the paint. I tested this by using black paint. After I was done using the black I gently rubbed my brush through the nubs and it looked like a lot of paint came off. That’s because it was a lot. When I wiped the brush on my paper towel no extra paint came off like it would have before using them.

Here is a gif, taken from the Paint Puck website, with permission, to demonstrate what it looks like getting the paint out of the brush:

I’ve found that the nature of them doesn’t mess with the point of my brushes at all. It even seems to keep them in better shape than what I was doing before (twisting brush along the side of the cup).

“You mentioned ones for oil painters, what is so special about those?”

I’m glad you asked. With oil paints you have to rinse them in a solvent because water will not rinse the oil out effectively. This has left oil painters with the options of metal objects, such as a coil or grate, to help remove the excess paint.

Well now there is a Paint Puck for that. These start out small, about the size of a US quarter, and grow! It will grow until it fits in the bottom of your rinse cup. The larger sized Paint Pucks are for use with water based paint products because those will grow as well.

“What about their claims?”

Well, lets address them in order.

Saves time: I think that it definitely does this. I have been able to get through painting much faster because of how much and how fast it gets the paint out of my brush.

Saves water: It seems that my water stays cleaner longer but I cannot definitely say whether or not this is from the Paint Pucks or not. It says that they are “hyper-saturated” which, honestly, I’m not entirely sure I follow the chemistry behind it to comment on that.

Saves brushes: I use mainly Rosemary & Co. Series 33 sables for a lot of things. I have found that I don’t have to reshape the brushes nearly as often as I had been previously.  It also seems that they don’t get worn out as fast as usual. It also seems to work very well on my synthetic brushes from various places. So I am very inclined to believe this true but only time will tell.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me. Where do I get these?”

You can go straight to their site here. And if you read my review of the Hobby Holder you can find them on the store on their website here.

These things are really great and I’d encourage any artist who have brushes to maintain to at least get one of these and check them out for themselves. They also make lots of cool rinse cup accessories that do other things but I don’t have any of those currently so I cannot comment on how well they work.