Sketching Adventures: Capturing Emotion in Compositions

On a recent family vacation to Kusadasi, Turkiye our hotel had a massive water park slide. At first, my 8-year-old was intimidated by the height and drop, but he quickly overcame his fear. Free of mommy duties, I plopped down on a lawn chair with my sketch book. I decided to draw the cute little girl several feet in front of me. I drew exactly what I saw, to practice my perspective drawing. But the overall drawing was rather boring.

After examining my sketch, I tried a different angle and implemented a few practices for good visual storytelling:

Start with the story: What was the plot? How was the main character(s) feeling?
Use dynamic poses and expressions: How can I push the emotion?
Play with composition: How can the overall composition push the storytelling and emotion?

This time, I drew what my son felt. The illustration automatically became more interesting to me. Whenever I sense something is missing in a composition, it is almost always the story and emotion.

A few books that have been helpful to me when sketching interesting compositions include:

Perspective Made Easy by Ernest R. Norling
Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul
Picture This by Molly Bang
Writing with Pictures by Uri Shulevitz

I was happy with my second take of this composition, but I would love to do a few more. How far could I push this story and composition? You never know until you try and try again.