# The instructor is the same size as the pupil

> Two silhouettes drawn the same size on one low ground line — one riding with both feet on the pedals, one running level with the rear wheel with a hand closed on the saddle.

August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/who-actually-taught-them-to-ride

Two figures move left to right across the back of a washed grey tee, drawn as pale flat silhouettes
on one plain unbroken ground line. The leading one is riding a bicycle with both feet on the pedals.
The second runs level with the rear wheel, leaning forward, one arm out, the hand closed on the back
of the saddle.

They are drawn the same size. That is the whole claim the picture makes.

## Why does this scene look slightly wrong for a moment?

Because everybody has a version of it in their head with an adult in it, and there is no adult here.

The composition is the familiar one — a bicycle at walking pace, somebody trotting alongside with a
grip on the saddle, a road going past. What has changed is the proportions. The figure holding on is
the same height as the figure riding, with the same build and the same stride, so the authority in
the picture is not coming from size or age. It is coming from the fact that one of them can already
do it.

That reads as a correction to the standard image rather than an omission from it. Somebody taught
this. The teaching happened at eye level, between two people who both live in the house and neither
of whom was in charge — the same short distance across which [one of them ends up doing the
explaining for the other](/stories/the-one-who-translates-for-the-younger-one).

## How much is going through one hand on a saddle?

Everything the design is about, and it is the single point where the two shapes touch.

Nothing else connects them. The running figure's other arm is swinging free, the feet are off the
ground mid-stride, and the contact is one closed hand at the back of the seat. Through that hand
goes the balance correction, the amount of speed being permitted, and the decision — made
continuously, by the person running — about whether to keep holding.

It also carries the whole risk of the arrangement. The hand can be opened at any moment and the
person opening it does not have to announce that they have. That is a large amount of judgement to
hand to somebody your own size, and the drawing puts it in the one place your eye lands.

## Why are both feet already on the pedals?

Because the riding has started, which moves the open question from the bicycle to the hand.

Feet down on the road, or one foot dabbing, would make this a picture about a person who cannot ride
yet. Both feet up and turning means the balance is being held by the rider — badly, probably, but
held. The bicycle is working. What has not been settled is when the hand comes off, and that is a
different and more interesting moment than the one the scene is usually drawn at.

It puts both parties in the same instant of uncertainty, which is unusual in a picture with a
teacher in it. Neither of them knows how the next four seconds go.

## Why is there one bare line instead of a road?

Because a line under two figures is a road, and drawing the road would cost more than it returns.

The ground line runs flat and unbroken right across the print, low in the frame, with no kerb, no
markings, no horizon and no scenery. It gives the pair somewhere to be moving and tells you they are
moving level rather than downhill, and it stops there. Add a pavement and a hedge and the design
becomes an illustration of a particular afternoon in a particular street, which narrows it for no
gain.

The unbroken line does something else on a back panel: it holds the two figures together as one
group and gives the composition a base, so the print does not float. Height is the same trick used
by [a doorframe with two columns of pencil marks on
it](/stories/the-height-chart-with-two-lines) — one straight reference edge, and everything
else measured against it.

## Does anyone need permission to print a scene like this?

No. Two flat unnamed silhouettes and a plain bicycle are nobody's property, and neither is the thing
that happened between them.

Two things could bring an owner into it. A likeness — a photograph of two specific children traced
closely enough to identify them, which is theirs and worth asking about. And marks on the machine: a
frame shaped like a particular manufacturer's, a name on the down tube. Both are licensable, so if a
real bicycle is genuinely the point of the shirt then clearing it belongs in the job. Where it is
not the point, the featureless version is better anyway, because a silhouette with no face and no
badge on it lets the person wearing it be either figure.

Style has no owner. A work does.

## Does it still work if an adult did most of the teaching?

Yes — and it is worth drawing it the way it actually went, including with a taller figure holding on.

Plenty of people learned this from a parent, or from a neighbour, or on grass alone with nobody
holding anything. The design is a scene rather than an argument, and the proportions are the part
that carries the truth in it: two figures the same size say one thing, two figures at different
heights say another, and one figure on the line by itself says a third.

What tends to get left out of all three versions is the run that actually worked. The person on the
saddle was rarely the person credited afterwards, in something like the way [a scooter bought with
two people's money](/stories/the-thing-they-bought-with-pooled-money) ends up described as
belonging to one of them. If it was the other child, this is the drawing that says so.

## Does it print well?

Yes, with one thing to handle deliberately: the figures are filled in a soft pale grey that sits
slightly translucent against the garment rather than as solid ink.

That is a real choice, not a printing accident, and it is what keeps the print looking sun-bleached
rather than stuck on. It also has a floor. Pushed too light the fill drops into the dark garment and
the legs disappear; laid down as flat solid white it turns into signage. One ink, a warm pale grey,
laid at a coverage that still reads at three metres, is where it holds. The mottling within the fill
should stay coarse — fine grain fills in on the weave and goes muddy.

Everything else is straightforward. Hard silhouette edges, no gradient, no outline stroke, and a
ground line heavy enough to hold without becoming a bar. Charcoal, washed grey, faded navy and olive
all give the pale fill separation; a light garment loses it. The artwork's own outline is the edge
of the print.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the run at [JustOG](/) — who was on the bicycle, who was holding the saddle, and how tall
each of them was at the time. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real
garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

The hand comes off somewhere past the right edge of the print. Neither of them says anything about
it afterwards.