Blog Posts - Jill Arwen Posadas

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.

Quick-start Beginner’s Guide to Oil Painting

5/2/2019

You’re a guy who lied through your teeth when you said you did oil painting to impress a cute, artsy girl.
You’re the type who’s ‘willing to try anything once’ and the ‘anything’ of the week for you was oil painting.
You just saw a Van Gogh film or something like that and you’re suddenly inspired to make like the movie.
You’re an art student (heaven forbid) who never paid attention or kept cutting class and now the plate is actually due and (heaven forbid again) there was no one you could pay real quick to paint it for you.

Whatever your reason is, if you happen to be looking for a quick and easy way to get your feet wet in oil painting, here’s a guide that I hope will be able to help.

But before anything else, I guess you could say that the first thing you might ‘get into your head’ for oil painting is…

Newsflash: Art is, in fact, a ‘real job’.

4/2/2019

One day about ten years ago I was on my way to work (I think this must’ve been the radio station, or the bank, I forget) after I’d gotten out of art school. I don’t remember why, but I stopped at a Pancake House where I ran into one of my (literally) old Fine Arts professors (God rest him). After I’d greeted him he was all

‘So, what are you doing now?’
‘Working, Sir.’
‘Of course, you would be.’

—which was as much as to say, ‘Of course you have a ‘real job’—your paintings suck, so you need one.’

Yes! I choose to fight! And here’s why you should fight for your art, too.

3/16/2019

So after asking, and asking, and asking—I finally got me a show. Thank You, God. Thank you Dear Mama Mary. Thank you, Dear Saint Jude, Dear Saint Rita, Dear Saint Philomena. Dear Saint Claire, Dear Saint Matthew, Dear Saint Joseph. Thank you, Dear Saint Dymphna.

You know, I was told once back in school that you can pray all day long to pass the exams but if you don’t study… so I’m a big believer in ‘God helps those who help themselves’. But I’m just as big a believer in ‘you can plan and help yourself all you want, but unless God gives you the green light, then’…

Having said that, I really am just so very grateful!

But yes, I finally did get a show, and it really was a miracle because you know, galleries usually are booked a year in advance. So this, and the last one I was able to sneak into as a guest artist (‘not really a show’, but still) really were, literally, heaven-sent.

There really was a lot of asking involved, though, and that’s what I want to talk about today, mainly because of two things I’ve seen recently.

One was an episode of that online self-help show (‘help themselves’, remember?) where the host interviewed this famous writer who said he didn’t start making any money from his writing until he was well into his 50’s. Even now (even with all his best-selling books), he said he still has trouble getting projects off the ground, or even support from people close to him.

The other one I saw was an article about how this now super famous pop star had a Facebook page put up by her haters back in uni saying how she was never going to be famous, ever.

That singer told about how she started out living in the cheapest apartment she could find. The article described how she really put herself out there writing songs for other people and all that other stuff in the background before things started happening for her. When she made the acceptance speech for her award in the end, she said in a nutshell that it is a lot of hard work.

Can’t stand them? Can they stand you? Get pointers for getting along with artists, here.

2/27/2019

Back at my first job, which was at an ad agency, I remember getting back to my cluster of cubicles one afternoon to find the cubicles across from mine in utter disarray. Chairs were upended with castors rolling in the air, paper flying every which where, and in the middle of that maelstrom was one of the creative directors.

I remember one of the secretaries leaning in to whisper, ‘Because he’s creative…’ Like that little phrase explained everything, like ‘being creative’ gave one the licence to throw a destructive hissy fit in the office.

I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well that ain’t right…’ I mean I was ‘creative’, but I didn’t think I’d get away with behaviour like that. Maybe because the guy was a big-shot CD and I was just a lowly newbie writer who was just happy to be there.

In any case, that incident stayed with me because I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be like that.

The Best Laid Plans: 5 Things to Consider When Planning an Exhibit

1/27/2019

Okay, so this is me writing about something I ought to be doing right about now (indeed, something I should’ve been doing late last year)—and God willing, I will be. But having done this more than a dozen times before, hopefully gives me enough to share on the subject of how to go about planning a set or a series of works, or for a show.

Again, I can really only speak from my own experience because I’m well aware that what works for one artist may not necessarily work for another. There’s no single, correct way when it comes to creation, I think (although red + yellow will never be green, I think, no matter how much of either you mix in).

Some people are averse to planning, and would much rather just ‘let it flow’. Me being the control freak I am, I tend to plan, not just because I’m a control freak but also because I have limited resources—time and energy being the most limited of all. So, I just like to try and make the most of them.

I do like to ‘figure things out when I get there’ while I’m working (because that’s… the fun part) and there are some things, I think, you really can’t pre-figure out, otherwise. But for me I do that sort of ‘on the fly’ stuff within a prepared structure. (Control freak, remember?) And also, there are other things you can’t plan, because, well, life happens.

That said, here are five things to consider when planning for an exhibit or creating a series of works—at least, the things I’ve had to consider, in general.

Still can’t think of something to paint? Get thinking techniques here.

12/26/2018

One of the gazillion nice things about art (or about people, if you like) is how no two artists (or people) think alike. It always used to amaze me back at art school how a bunch of people could be sitting in front of the same flowers or fruit or model and still come up with different things. Nobody ever painted or drew the subject in exactly the same way.

The thought process behind the production of art is different for everybody. There’s no, single, ‘correct’ way, if you will, to think of what to paint. In taking off from my previous entry on how reflecting on why you’re painting can help you come up with something to paint, this entry zeroes in on the actual how to think of something.

Like I said, even if you’re twins or very much in love, no two people are ever going to think exactly alike or conceptualise exactly the same painting. (Okay I take back the latter, as there may be grandfathered exceptions I am unaware of.)

So all I can offer here is how I go about it, in the hopes that it might give you some idea of how you could go about it, too. Especially if (continuing again from where my previous post left off), you’re doing No.13: You’re painting because you have a show.