For this painting I chose a warm color palette with mostly yellows. The barista’s dress and espresso machine were a blue-green to provide contrast.
Barista - Brian Kelly, 2009 acrylic on canvas board, 9″ x 12″
- the MuseThe Raven Coffeehouse inspired another new original song. Unfortunately, the acoustic piano drowned out the vocals on the live track, so I tried to blend the live video with some studio music so the lyrics were intelligible. This was much more difficult than I expected because my live audio was playing in my ear as I layed new tracks so that the lyrics would be timed to the video. If I got ahead or behind at all readjusting to get back on time was a great challenge. When I get some time I’ll do a more polished studio version, but in the mean time……
Piano Muse, - © 2009 Brian Kelly
OK, so it is really Smit’s Handwound Guitar Pickups (SHGP) available through smitspickups.com, not Smith Custom Pickups. But since the article was about a guitar comparison and not directly a pickup comparison, then this is just a small oversight. The bottom line is that while checking out the Guitar Mill custom Tele (with handwound pickups from Kevin Smith) and comparing the axe to a Hahn (with Lindy Fralin pickups), the reviewers at Guitar Player magazine picked up on exactly the aspects of tone that led Kevin Smith to wind his own pickups.
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No fooling, the next evening of folk rock and roots music with Brian Kelly at the Raven Coffeehouse in Port Huron Michigan will be April Fool’s Day.
Some good friends came out to see me at the Raven tonight, it was great to see them and visit between sets. The night flew by. Milan played a couple of his unique acoustic solos between sets. A nice constrast to my folk rock, it was a great crowd pleaser. Here is one of the studio versions of a song he played. You can listen to more of Milan’s music at www.myspace.com/milanacoustic
- © 2008 Milan
The planning for this painting placed emphasis on the color choice. I was going for a bold graphic style. To do this I emphasized high chroma colors. These are the colors that have the most color for a given hue. The most yellow yellow is light, the most purple purple is near black. I also chose mostly warm colors (red, orange, yellow) with the bluesman the only cool color.
Bluesman at Piano - Brian Kelly, 2009 acrylic on canvas board, 9″ x 12″
This color selection also helped when it came time to revise or correct the painting. After letting it sit overnight, the attitude of the player was too different from my sketch and did not capture the mood. I liked the hat, so I adjusted the figure as much as I could without changing the hat. Since the colors were mostly straight colors with some adjustment with white or black, matching colors was easy. The time lapse video shows the power of acrylics to enable correction and changes.
Time lapse video of the painting, set to Kevin Smith’s “Living Room Blues” from his Red Album
- the MuseThe club was one of my very first paintings. I did it in pen and ink first, and did not like that at all. 
I did a version in pastel. Then eventually I did a version in acrylic on paper, because I did not expect it to turn out well. The acrylic colors brought it to life much better than my use of pastels, so I kept it.
I wanted to see how a time lapse video of a painting would work out with my Canon G9. I figured a second version of The Club, this time acrylic on canvas, would be an excellent time to try time lapse animation. The total painting time was about four hours. Shorter than most of my paintings, but I had already worked out much of it with the original version. Removing some time that was literally just “watching the paint dry” 
before adding layers, a nice three minute video resulted. I put it to Greenview Laundromat by my buddy Kevin Smith. I thought upbeat instrumental jazz was a great sound track to put to the painting.
The Club - Brian Kelly, 2007 - acrylic on bristol board, 9″ x 12″
The Club II - Brian Kelly, 2009 - acrylic on canvas board, 9″ x 12″
The Club II - Time Lapse Video
- the Muse