Jill Arwen Posadas - Jillablog

You Are Not Your Work (So Don’t Get Hurt)

3/13/2020

There we were, my co-workers and I, sitting on the beach on a Saturday night—they, with their beers, and I with the one can of Coke I'd been nursing all throughout the evening.

We fell to talking about the vicissitudes of digital marketing agency life and, the discussion turned towards the pain of having one’s hard work dissed by the client (and sometimes, even by one’s own colleagues). (I confess I do whine about this a lot.)

One of my fellow writers who was, for once, actually a few years older than I was (most of my co-workers being millennials) piped up and said: ‘Being older and having worked far longer than any of you here, I can tell you, you are not your work.’

I may not have had an alcoholic drop to drink, but I might as well have had for the heat with which I retorted, ‘I have a problem with that statement’.

Now, everyone is entitled to his own opinion. And in retrospect I may have understood where that co-worker of mine was coming from. Honest. But forgive me when I repeat, I really do have a problem with that statement.

Read on and let me know if you agree with me, or at least get where I’m coming from on this.

6 Truths They Told Me at Art School

2/15/2020

Last month I talked about six things my (or well most of mine, since one of them was somebody else’s) art teachers told me that weren’t true. That wasn’t to say I had lousy teachers; as I’ve said, I really like to think they were all just doing their best and hopefully they themselves didn’t think they were lying and believed what they said to be true.

That said, I figured this month I’d go into six things I was told in my artist’s formative years that not only turned out to be true, but turned out to be mantras, of sorts, for me. Or at least, these were things that have stayed with me (for good or ill) all throughout what passes for my career.

See if you’ve ever been told any of these things and whether you’ve swallowed them hook, line and sinker as I have.

6 Lies My Art Teachers Told Me

1/30/2020

I was never a particularly exemplary student—at art or any school, for that matter. But I flatter myself thinking that I did try, and for me trying meant swallowing everything the teacher said, hook, line and sinker.

Now that the jaded ol’ jillamonster has seen a bit of mileage, I now know that ‘it ain’t necessarily so’, what some of those well-meaning (I hope) maestros once told me.

And as a former art teacher myself (if I may make so bold as to call myself that), I never wanted to (for lack of a better word) impose anything on my students that I knew was more of a personal preference than a hard-and-fast rule. Plus certain things that I knew they had to figure out for themselves (for which all I could do really was to do my best to guide them towards whatever those were).

So why am I sharing six things my own teachers told me that I found to be not quite as black-and-white as they made out to be? It’s not because of some anarchist, rebellious, question authority x down with the status quo whatever or anything. Far from it.

It’s because I want you to know, if you’ve just started getting into art or taking classes or trying to find yourself artistically or something—that some things in art aren’t governed by what your teacher says. You need to find your own path, your own way of doing things, and that path is what makes what you create truly your own. Sounds pretty darn obvious, but there you go.

Why painting is a HAPPY thing (A very happy thing, indeed)

12/25/2019

For some reason, swirling rainbows and smiles sparkling in the sunshine don’t seem to be as powerful images of painting or painters versus some super sad guy chopping off his ear and gifting it to a hooker.

It’s true, it hurts to paint, for a lot of reasons—there’s a lot of discipline and hard work involved. You work hard and long enough, you can get burnt out, and oftentimes, however hard you work, people don’t seem to appreciate what you create.

Yet in spite of all this (in the words of the immortal Mr Cougar Mellencamp), it hurts so good you can’t help but keep on painting. And when people think to ask you, it’s hard to explain why. Not that you’re obliged to, of course, but it helps to be able to articulate these things for the types who might ask why anyone would choose to be an artist in the first place.

So here are a few articulated reasons why painting is possibly one of the happiest things for mortals to do. (Why everyone doesn’t, in spite of these reasons, is another matter entirely, but I guess one could look at it as a, theme park, of sorts: You can’t get in unless you have a ticket, but once you do, you run wild, have fun and you don’t ever want to leave.)

What’s your process? ('Aviary' Behind the Scenes)

11/15/2019

Deogratias, ‘Aviary’ opened as smoothly as may be expected given the circumstances, and my warmest thanks go out to everyone who went to the opening and to the show since. I also want to thank everyone who’s expressed a genuine interest in my work, and by that I mean those who took the time to find out the how’s and why’s behind it.

That said, it rather struck me how I’ve been asked ‘what’s your process’ for making the pieces in the show. Having spoken about how I go about planning for an exhibit on the jillablog before, this post talks about the process behind the creation of the canvases for ‘Aviary’, in particular.

From under the jillabed, to out of the jillahead: How jillamonsters are born

10/31/2019

‘What am doing this for, anyway?’

This is the kind of question that crops up in the back of one’s mind unbidden as one moves through the end stages of preparing for what could very well be one’s last show for a long, long time. During those long hours of arranging scales-cum-feathers and replacing feet with talons, one tends to wonder how this crazy, caffeine-fuelled ride got started in the first place.

The answer lies in the swirling mists of time some 40 odd years ago, haha—I mean you know how ‘not enough hugs as a child’ has been given as a reason for (overly) aggressive behaviour in adulthood? It’s like that, lol. (Oh dear, someone’s been watching that Sherlock-Sigmund film again.)

Quick-start Beginner’s Guide to Palette Knife Painting

9/27/2019

I’d like to begin this guide by fully disclosing that I was never really taught how to paint with a palette knife.

I didn’t learn it in any of the bazillions (it seems) of formal, extra-curricular art classes I’ve taken since I started taking them when I was about 13. I didn’t learn it at art school proper, where we were told that palette knives were for mixing paint, and that you would wreck your brushes if you used them for this purpose.

And yet I’ve done two entire shows featuring palette knife painting (not counting a third ‘sort of solo show’ #itscomplicated) plus another with a couple of pieces done the same way)—along with the few odd pieces for group shows. I can’t help it—palette knife painting is insanely addicting.

So it’s on the basis of that that I’d like to share what I’ve learnt over the thirty odd years I’ve been ‘playing with knives’. On top of maybe sparing you a learning curve (although there’s a lot of fun that can be had in that), I’m hoping you might find the same intense enjoyment in this particularly tactile, energetic and expressive method of painting.

So to sort of follow up on the Quick-Start Beginner’s Guide to Oil Painting I made for my students last summer, this is a very informal, loosely written quick-start guide to painting with a palette knife. (Which actually is more like a slow, rambling love story between me and palette knife painting.) Such as it is, this guide will be covering

Parts of a palette knife
Choosing your knives
The kinds of knives out there
Palette knife painting techniques
Mediums (or things you can mix with the paint)
Caring for your palette knives

Quite a number of the terms I’ll be using, I made up, mainly because (as I’ve said) I never attended any real ‘How to Paint with a Palette Knife’ classes. I’ll be sure to let you know which terms are mine, though.

Get Your Second Wind: 10 Tips for Tackling Artist’s Burnout

8/17/2019

Ever been in that dilemma? When you have this insane allergy, but if you took an antihistamine, you’d get all sleepy, and you CAN’T get all sleepy because you have to work? Being burnt out, but unable to take time off is kind of like that.

Obviously, time off to decompress is the ultimate solution to the kind of chronic fatigue syndrome artists have, but there are times when there simply is no ‘next time’. Either you paint (or create) it now, or never. Well, maybe not never, ever, but, sometimes there’s just no moving a deadline and you have to make some hard choices.

Mind, this isn’t just me: I recently came across this article about how holidays, however much needed, just aren’t an option, sometimes for burnt-out professionals in the workplace.

So taking off from last month’s post about having ABS (not washboard but more like washout), I’ve got 10 suggestions that might help to tide you over. That is, until all the work is finished and ready for your (hopefully) adoring public.

Got ABS (Artist’s Burnout Syndrome)? Time to stop working out, for a while.

7/12/2019

We interrupt our purportedly regularly scheduled blog because it’s come to my attention that I might be burnt out.

Sometimes we’re aware of what’s going on—dimly, maybe, but still—but it never really comes home to you until somebody (often the last person you expect) spells it out for you in no uncertain terms.

Well, burnout happens. I have seen it happen to other people before; I guess I’m seeing it firsthand now, lol. Although I confess I didn’t think it would happen, to me or at least like this, or that things would come to such a pass.

Anyway for this ‘interruptablog’ (which I’m writing instead of the quick-start guide to acrylic like the one I did for oil which I’d thought I’d do since I’m acrylicking now), I’m going to go into ‘artist’s burnout’. Specifically, burnout in people who paint, sculpt…maybe musicians, poets, playwrights, thespians and makers of velvet flowers, too, I don’t know.

Which means we’ll be looking at why you shouldn’t paint (or do art in general) when you’re tired, and how you know you’re burnt out.

Inspiration is BS: Here’s What You REALLY Need to Create Great Paintings

6/16/2019

So I’m ‘back in the saddle’, as it were—painting factory’s in full swing (at the time of writing). And having lived among humans for so very long, I’ve picked up the human habit of, well, looking for um, shall we say, sympathy or, support while I’m, you know. Painting factory-ing.

And while I was bending the unfortunate ear of one of my co-workers I was struck by something she said: ‘Oh no. You have to be super inspired to work on all that.’

Now, it’s not that I don’t appreciate her time or sympathetic ear. And, I am aware that most humans don’t ‘get’ what people like me do in our respective painting factories. In fact, I’m fairly sure that hadn’t been the first time I’d heard something to that effect.

However I would like to set something straight: thinking that artists live on inspiration alone is pure Bos taurus doodie.