Canvas 1

This is my first canvas in many years. I'm wrestling with the lower half. Parts are too simple for a 30x30 canvas - there are sections that look unfinished (lower right). But I don't have anything else I intend to do with those sections. So I'm a bit stuck for now. Partly I haven't worked in this scale for a long time, and I never got comfortable there. Partly it's still about the acrylics, which handle so differently than the watercolors I've learned to love.

So what do you think? Seriously, I'd like to know how this strikes you.

Trouble is that this image works OK at this scale - but not so well at 30x30. So try to picture it two and a half feet square {grin}. Don't you do that sort of thing - wondering what things would be like if they were larger or smaller than they are now? I do this with parts of houses and architecture all the time. Some buildings could be greatly improved in this way - others are hopeless. Some are magnificent the way they are, and I love to feel that by trying to mantally change things and nothing can be changed without departing from perfection.

How about looking at people and trying to picture in detail how they probably looked when they were a lot younger - or how they will look when they are much older?

How about how things would look if a certain item or object were removed? This last one is easier than the others - you close one eye, and cover the item with your hand or fingers or arm so you mind can fill in the scene behind the interrupting limb.

Or how about imagining how something would look in a different color? I do this with cars a lot, picturing them white, in particular, because in that color the shapes become the primary visual element, and I can evaluate the desinger's work. Like buildings, some cars are lovely and perfect balances - others are terrible ugly combinations of forms and proportions that look worse than random. And the rest are in between, where mor games can be played with changing shapes, lowering bumpers, decreasing the size or position of tail-lights, etc.

Doesn't everyone do this stuff? How do you not do this?