Paint Nerd Blog Is On Summer Break

I started this blog in October of 2025 as way to indulge my desire to research nerdy painting topics and challenge myself to write more, while also hopefully creating a useful resource for others. I knew if I didn’t make a regular schedule for myself, I probably wouldn’t stick with it – so I set a goal of posting every Sunday. And – 28 posts and 31,865 words later – I did stick with it! A huge thanks to everyone who gave me feedback and topic ideas, and everyone who subscribed. It was a big motivator, and a great feeling to know I was helping someone else learn something new.

As you probably guessed from the title, it’s now time for me to take a little break from writing as I move back to full-time with my “real job” as a summer camp director. Being a camp director offers a large amount of flexibility through the winter, and barely enough time to brush my teeth in the summer – so it won’t be a break for me, just a pause on writing about painting! I plan to go back to writing again in October. If you subscribe, you’ll get an email when I write the first post of the new season!

I have lots of fun ideas for the next season of posts, including:

• Tour the handmade watercolor paper factory in Montreal
• Making your own watercolors
• Demo some of the new drawing/tracing apps available for copying sketches onto your paper

This also seems like a good time for a little re-cap.

Nearly 3,500 people from 64 different countries have read Paint Nerd at least once this season! The most read post by far was “Are My Paints Poison? Part II” which looked at the environmental impact of paint (both when we apply it and in manufacturing) and what we as artists can do to mitigate those impacts. I’m not sure what that says that so many people are concerned about this topic – I guess that artists are an environmentally conscious bunch! The second most-read post was “Paper Parameters” which is a deep dive into how watercolor paper is made, and provides a framework for evaluating what kinds of paper you like so that you can buy paper with more confidence. This post required much more research than any of the others, however, it’s also the post that I’m most proud of as I think it’s a really useful tool, and information that isn’t readily available elsewhere. The companion post “Watercolor Paper Myth Busting” has all of the paper intel I found along the way and couldn’t fit into “Paper Parameters.” The third most-read post is “DIY Granulating Medium,” which seems to be something a lot of us would like to make. My main conclusion personally was that I was better off getting more granulating paint instead, so in “Granulating Mixtures” I went in-depth on how to maximize granulation effects by mixing pigments with different weights. Some of my favorite posts drew takeaways from the history of watercolor painting: “Violetomania,” which looked at the history of purple paint, and “Paint Like Winslow,” where I shared insights from my visit to the Winslow Homer watercolor exhibit at MFA Boston. The most under-appreciated post (based on numbers of views) might be this one: “12+ Painting Tools to Steal From Your Kitchen,” which was a lot of fun to write. If you missed any of those posts, maybe you can go back and read one every Sunday until I’m back in October!

Thanks again to all of you readers out there. Have a great summer of painting!