another in progress

This is a picture i have been trying to nail down. I am not getting the George Bellows look i am shooting for. It is useful in the sense i am translating it from a black and white picture from some sports almanac. i am not very happy about it though and cannot seem to make any decisive choice in how to handle it.

These are something I am calling Scenes from Columbo. I did them as a lark and was intending to paint them in but I like the way they look as drawings ( in sharpie on canvas). I wish I could have my cake and eat it too. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to reproduce these and do to them as I choose while keeping the originals.
I could do this ad naseum given a chance and maybe i still will. There seems to be an interesting ...something when i engage my pop culture roots of tv and movies as art subjects. It may just be the kitch factor but perhaps there is an honesty that comes to light.

I often joke that i don't actualy paint so much a wrestle with the paint. This is true. the big cat statue picture was one such example. There were many many tumbles with the painting, none of which I felt were wins on my end. It may be a case were the starting premise was so incorrect that little or nothing could save it. The end result is the building picture. I simply scrapped the idea after months and gessoed over it to do the picture it now is.
I would like to revisit the painting idea again but obviously not on that canvas.
r

This was never meant to be as representational as it is turning out. It was to be about the color yellow. Yellow on a tonally muted background. I may still be able to pull it off but........
The current plan is to add a forsythia pranch in the super for-ground. This is meant to a) extend the depth nad b) by placement physically unite the yellow bush to the cab/bus element as on contiguous stretch of the aformention color.
I have not quite made up my mind if theis is the way to go or not.
r

This is an painting I am currantly working on. It is from a photo my sister took at a july 4th family event. I am realated to the people seen here. I certainly like it as a slice of (a particular) americana. Coke, Cheez-its, Dunk'n, and baby bottle. All that and a white picket fence. The commentary writes itself, so to speak.
I should of taken a pic of an earlier stage were it was just the charcoal and the reds, it had a nice Larry Rivers kind of look to it.
r.