To add more would be less

Knowing when to stop applies to the clay sketch just the same as it does to a water colour. There comes a point, usually quite early in the creative process, when to add more would be less. The secret is to suggest, rather than to define detail. My quarter life-size clay sketch of the figure has reached that stage, and maybe even gone beyond it. 

What you see in these pictures is the figure in its final form. I now have to make a mold from the clay. If it goes wrong, I risk loosing all.

Photographs of work in progress are useful in highlighting faults. Whereas the eye wanders over the form, the photograph mercilessly arrests it at one particular point. It's not so much finding fault with detail but in form and symmetry. For example, in the above photograph I notice that the left breast is slightly out of balance with its neighbour on the right. Having said that, my female followers know that breasts are not always symmetrical!

The sculptor Rodin, on early photographs of his work in progress, sometimes inked in adjustments that needed to be made.