So...
I think this is the way to go. I guess I'm using the paper to "tip the bucket" and the canvas to prove it out.
So what am I seeing here? What might be hard for you to see is the many "little stomps" into the black on the bottom. A horizon implied by the boundary of white and black. The pink underbelly. Marks, organized into something closer to creature-pomorphism. I think I can scale up into the larger canvas while keeping the schema... and the scale up itself will introduce enough new problems to keep the spontaneity going strong.
I see the swing arms, the knobs, the insides that turn the outsides.