I’m having such a challenging time with this painting. It’s a rear view single bike on a large 4’ square canvas. I shrank the bike so it is about life size with a foot or so of space around the bike. The background color which looks so great behind the pic of Sheldon’s bike looks bland as hell here. Now i regret making it smaller. I feel like in painting im like Alex Katz in that i wrestle with wanting the painting to be abstract or representational. I love paint yet i want the picture to be of something not painting as object. Now that i made the bike smaller i wish it were larger like the bold marks of Franz Klein or Motherwell. What can i do? Even just learning from it would be a success.

I am so tempted to paint it out and redraw it super large. I did. I painted out and then flip the canvas over and retrace that big. I love how it looks just the messy traced drawing. Onward!