Yeah, he wasn't trying to confess love to him. Well, not exactly, anyway.
Will had spent months away from Mike where he saw them growing distant. But he still had all these feelings for Mike, which I guess we were supposed to interpret as keeping him from reaching out to him and causing the rift, all the while he saw El getting letter after letter.
So, Will comes up with a plan to give Mike a gift as a grand gesture of friendship. However, that plan is scuttled when Mike all but ignores him, and it's not until their heart to heart that Will decides to bring the painting to give to him later.
It wasn't meant to be a confession, but it was based on Will's growing feelings. It was a way for him to communicate how he feels about Mike and how he sees him (brave, dynamic, a leader) in a relatively low risk manner.
The only thing that actually makes it cross into explicitly romantic territory is when he denies being responsible for the painting and shifts credit to El. It becomes a masked romantic confession at that point because he uses his own feelings for Mike to reassure Mike that he gives El courage and strength, that El loves him and needs him and always would.
The audience knows this is bull, as El was clueless as to the painting, thinking it was for a girl. It's only Mike's obliviousness and apparent disregard for El's letters that, for the convenience of plot, I guess, causes Mike to not pick up on the contradiction. I suppose we're meant to believe that, if Mike did figure it out, he just would have assumed El was hiding the surprise.
So, yeah, Will didn't make the painting as a love confession, simply as a means to communicate how he feels about Mike in a manner he excels at and feels comfortable doing. It was likely an attempt to save their crumbling friendship, but it did become a love confession, albeit a masked one, when Will decided to credit El for everything and explicitly lay down exactly how he feels, only in her name. This is why he turns away and silently cries afterwards. He's giving up and letting Mike go, accepting that it's a hopeless venture.
Well, until season 5, at least, when he (very inexplicably, except for plot convenience) seems more gone for Mike than ever after a single conversation with Robin.
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