A Bicycle Built for Two (or three)

EDM Challenge #35  Draw a bicycle or a part of one.  My boss and his wife ride a tandem bicycle together.  It's totally adorable.  They are going to have a baby in September, and I really, really hope they get to recreate this scene.  I hope it brings to mind a nearby picnic on the lake, and not a lonely, sad, empty bicycle.

I had fun with this one -- trying to fill most of the page with paint.  I used a lot more paint than I usually do!  I don't know what to do with backgrounds.  Do you start with the background and hope that it doesn't bleed through to your foreground stuff?  I started with the bike and then painted things around it, but you can totally tell.  Is that just something I have to live with if I'm using watercolors?  I'm terrified of oil painting, but it would be nice to just paint over an already-dried background -- or something I didn't like!