Celebrating 500 posts

This post is number 500 on this blog! I never thought I would get that far when I started this My French Easel blog in August 2007. First, I am sending a big thank you to everyone who follows or visit this blog. This helps me carrying on.

Source: background photo from NASA

I had a several reasons to start this blog:

• This motivates me to paint and create.
• It acts like a journal and I can refer to when I want.
• I like to share my painting tips.
• As a non-native English speaker, writing regularly in English is a good exercise.

A few numbers

I try not to look at the blog's statistics too often, but numbers show some interesting and often surprising facts.

• 199509 pageviews since the start
• 207 followers
• Post with the most page views (5,234 Pageviews): Texture in oil with painting knives
• Most used search term that led to the blog: Hokusai

This blog is not a commercial venture. I decided not to put any advertising on the site and I don’t plan to change that. I use Amazon affiliate links (and managed to buy one art book with the proceeds...), but this does not dictate the content of the blog.

A few favourite posts

Let me do that by category.

Paintings: Cable car ride for oil paintings; Dragon Gate (San Francisco) for mixed-media; River Kennet at Avebury for watercolour and Children at the river for pastel.

Recommended book: It’s hard to pick one, but the most inspiring book I read and reviewed on the blog so far is The Creative habit by Twyla Tharp.

Museum: I can’t really pick a favourite museum, however the Marmottan museum in Paris is a must see if you like Impresionnism.

Painting studio tips: two posts my readers found useful are How to open a stuck oil paint tube and How to set-up your French easel (on your own).

Art material: my vote goes to the daylight easel lamp because I can paint in the evening with it, without fear of discovering the next day that all the colours are wrong.