I’ve been simultaneously making new compositional sketches everyday while revising older ones. Getting the distance of a few days can be effective in terms of obtaining an objective point of view on each sketch. The biggest challenge I’ve encountered is that in my efforts to overlap figures more, I’m finding it difficult to create compositions that don’t feel too cluttered or overcrowded. At the same time, I’ve been pushing myself towards compositions with large amounts of figures so it’s a very delicate balance. The figures that tend to overlap more easily are the ones that are bending over; the ones that stand straight up don’t tend to offer as many options.
Today I’ve been focusing on immersing the figures more deeply in the water. It’s easily achieved since most of the figure sculptures I made are nearly full figures, allowing me to simply erase out the lower portions of the figure. This creates quite a different visual effect in that only portions of the figures are shown, allowing for the use of more figures without taking up as much space.
Clara Lieu 