Greetings dear friend @dutchchemist, first of all thank you for taking the time to read my contributions and with respect to your approaches they are very good and I will try to give you a clear implication:
With respect to approach 1, notice that in the previous paragraph, I make the caveat so that we make a mental image about a dissolution and I explain that they are formed by solute and solvent, being the latter in greater proportion, so it is to be expected that in our mental image there are many water molecules that interact with each other and that is where the empty spaces in the image, would represent the few places that would occupy the oxygen dissolved in the water.
With respect to your approach 2, no doubt you are right, what I was trying to explain through the image is that both bases and acids, when they behave as strong electrolytes, tend to dissociate and the best way to represent them is through their aqueous phases. At this point, both HCl and NaOH should appear as (aq), i.e. in aqueous solution, so I must modify the respective images because it was an error on my part.
Again I appreciate you taking the time to make the respective observations.