Progress with the Relief Maquettes

Having removed all the clay from the two maquettes, I'm now able to ascertain which shapes work for this positive/negative exploration and which shapes don't. One of the maquettes, the rounder one of the two, hasn't really worked at all in the negative: the sides on the edge of the form are too steep, the principal concaves are too acute and severe, the hole doesn't have enough substance around it for it to make sense in this form - for a hole to work in this kind of sculpture, in my opinion, it has to be formed organically by the substance around it, not just 'pierced' through (that conveys a very different feel).
To make the negative of this first maquette work I would need to work on the negative by adding substance around the hole and I would also need to make the whole relief bigger, to give the concaves a bit more room to breathe. I won't do that though, because I want to spend time now on incorporating in the large relief what I've taken from this process - that's the whole point of making maquettes.

The second maquette has been more succesful:

The transition from the edge of the relief into the concave is more gradual; the compisition is simpler than that of the first maquette, which works better in the negative, the shapes flowing more coherently, with the movement gradually climaxing in the 'centre' of the composition from the edge.

I also rather like the way the positive side is white and smooth (ish, since it's a maquette) and the negative side has the texture of the clay and has retained a slight staining from the clay.

So, it's now time to transpose these findings to the large relief. Will I be able to incorporate a hole in the large one?
I shall be doing some more maquettes as well, playing around with composition and holes.