The Tao of Walking Ridge

I was walking along the St. Clair River in Port Huron when I noticed this reflection of buildings across the river in Sarnia, Ontario.  As I moved about to hide my reflection and line up the buildings in the mirrored windows, it eventually occurred to me that anyone in the building must have wondered what I was up to - until I finally pulled out my camera for the shot.

I’ve long been a fan of Lee Oskar harmonicas. So when I started trying to play in a brace, I tired the Lee Oskar brace. Though wire, it is fairly firm. Plenty firm enough for folk riffs. I find that with a hand to help hold the harp, some aggressive blues licks can also be played. This trick works well when playing guitar with open tuning, where a free hand can occasionally be used to hold the harp.

I’ve tried a few braces, and I found the Lee Oskar harp brace to udjust well and hold its position well.  The wing nuts are easy to use and readjust if necessary as I’m playing.

I did learn something the hard way.  I had bought some Hohner Special 20 harps, figuring that they might be better for folk and take a little more abuse if I blew too hard while concentrating on strumming.  I understood the comments I found online that the harmonicas were hard to get in and out of the Lee Oskar brace, but I still thought overall it was worth it.  Then I put a Lee Oskar harmonica in the brace and discovered it isn’t exactly the same size!  Lee Oskars are just a bit smaller, and they pop in and out easily.

So if you want to play harp on a brace, I can highly recommend a Lee Oskar brace, especially if you are going to use it with Lee Oskar harmonicas.  An additional advantage is the availability of minor key harps from Lee Oskar.  Though tone may be the deciding factor, I’ve grown accustomed to the blend of chords and the ability to precisely select higher notes that are crisp and cut through the mix.  I also find the Lee Oskar harp bends more easily.

To celebrate the Baldwin Cafe in Lake Orion, Michigan (3010 Baldwin Rd, at the corner of Waldon) becoming a no smoking cafe, I offered to create a painting for the restaurant. The owners were appreciative, and offered to frame what I painted.

A wall and furniture in the diner style restaurant is red, so this formed a cornerstone of the color palette.  Along the way, the pale blue against the warm tones created a sort of art deco effect that I really liked.  The theme also had to capture the feeling of sitting at the bar watching the cooks prepare the food right in front of you.

The painting evolved as I painted it.  The original sketch was only of the dining counter and stools with patrons.  But the right side of the painting had too much empty space so the booths were added.  Then the left had too much empty space so the cook and grill were added.  There was probably more that could be added, but you have to stop sometime and I wanted to keep it simple and bold.

Baldwin Cafe - Brian Kelly, 2008 - acrylic on canvas board, 16″ x 18″

On a recent walkabout I came across a bead shop. The selection was really overwhelming. You can find beads for just about any theme you might want and assembly your own jewelry. Very easy, and very personalized, very cool.

I find very little jewelry with a sophisticated mariner’s theme.  Sure, you can find the anchor pendant, or the shark’s tooth.  But that is about it.  After wandering the store for a while, I found a string of black coral beads and finally I found some glass trade beads that made a nice contrast with the black coral.  Millefiori patterns with blues and greens were more common, but got lost against the black coral.  When I came across these yellow trade beads, their size and color worked perfectly with the 6 x 10 mm black coral beads.  After stringing them up a handful of times to check the spacing and overall length, I finally crimped the clasp on and I had my very own very unique jewelry with a sailors theme.

Sometimes you hear a quote that is cute.  Sometimes you hear a quote that makes you think.  Sometimes you hear a quote that stops you in your tracks.  Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS had such a quote.  He suggested, referencing the Tao Te Ching, to “identify your greatest fear and become curious about it”.

Now that is a strategy.  How many times has a stressful event been worse than the dread of it?  Fear of an event causes negative feelings for a long time, even if the event is short.  Sometimes the event never happens, and then all you have is the pain of fear.  It is much harder to not do something.  Redirecting the fear to curiosity is a powerful approach for doing something about it.

I’ve always liked the colors I chose for the painting “The Club”. I chose them intuitively, by trial and error, and mixed the acrylics on the fly. Having recently discovered the color analysis tool in Gimp, I thought I’d analyze my own painting to see what it was I liked about the painting. The analysis was a bit of a surprise.

I thought the background was a shade of green, but in fact was a desaturated yellow. Thus, 80% of the painting was made up of yellow or orange hues, with some variation in intensity and value. Intensity is how much of the hue is in the mix, and value is how dark/light. A dark value with no intensity is black. A light value with no intensity is white. Maximum intensity is the most intense color, whether it is light or dark depends upon the hue. This creates a triangular description of the hues that is well represented by the Gimp color tool.

The blue-green in the lower left of the painting turned out to be 1/3 of the way around the color wheel from the dominant color in the painting.  This is a common approach to color selection in web site design.  The dark half desaturated value of the blue green also proved some contrast with the brighter orange.

Note how the tool allows for easy selection of thirds.  The orange color plot shows that upper left is a blue green at the point of the triangle.  The blue-green plot shows the variety of colors available for that hue.  The most intense color would have too much of a neon feel for what I wanted in this painting.

Understanding what worked can greatly help plan and try new things in your color palette.  Gimp is a great tool to assist in this.  And another reason to use Linux.

Magenta is a color that is a bit rare in nature.  That may be why it is especially captivating when we see it.  Sunsets with a mix of reds and magentas and oranges create as powerful a mood as any painting can. So I decided to use this color mix with a simple silhouette to inspire the imagination of the viewer.

This painting is also an example of how versatile acrylics are in recovering from mistakes.  This canvas originally held a painting that I didn’t like at all.  So I sanded it down, and recovered with gesso.  Then I laid a sunset theme that I liked, but hated the first silhouette.  So I painted over that image and tried this one of the island.

The silhouette is not black, it is a dark desaturated third from to the dominant.  In this case, a dark desaturated green to better compliment the light reds, orange-reds, and magentas.

Sunset Isle - Brian Kelly, 2008, acrylic on canvas board 14″ x 18″