Maquette in "Tree" Dimensions

The Marines in the Belleau Wood sculpture will soon have the right environment in which to wage war, as I've begun the process of sculpting the base of the sculpture.

I had to determine the piece's exact arrangement in three-dimensions--  especially since I've altered the kneeling figure's pose. I needed to see how it will exist in the round. This required more than just the sketch I had, or the image I'd developed in my mind.  It required a three-dimensional drawing, and thus a Maquette.

A maquette enables the artist to "sketch" in 3-D without wasting time or materials, and to lay out the composition so as to be interesting from all sides.

Tree forms will be a major part of the composition, and I had to have a better notion of how individual branches and trunks would move in space, and counter or accent the movement of the figures and their "limbs"...

I started by using my original template for human skeletal armatures, and scaling it down to four inches... I then made two figures to scale, just like their eighteen-inch brethren.

UPDATE: New Photos!

I used wire to build miniature armatures for the Springfield and the Chauchat, and re-took the photos...

Ironically, the above photos are hard to read in the two dimensions of the computer screen! But they give an idea about the rough sketch of the base and how the figures will play in it.