Chess Piece Composition

                         Chess Piece Composition

                           Title: Oh my, I'm falling!

This is a drawing that I created of a chess piece while paying attention to: Line, pattern, rhythm, and value- while making it complex, thoughtful, and realistic but also displaying movement without the chess piece being in the center of the page. Now isn't THAT tough? 

First, I chose a chess piece: mine was the Rook. Then, I started off by making thumbnail sketches of some of my ideas for the drawing. I drew them in my sketchbook while using HB, 2B, and 6B pencils. 

I had created some ideas, but the one I chose to draw was an idea that I had envisioned from a fellow CyberARTS student that was sitting at my table.
 We were exchanging various humorous suggestions for chess piece drawings, when she mentioned one about a chess piece falling out of the sky.
 I didn't take too much thought into it at first, but after maybe a few seconds I stumbled upon the vision of the chess piece falling out of the sky in a comical sort of way.
 I fabricated the design for my chess piece with careful consideration about proportion and placement- the chess piece was placed to the mid right, clouds placed at the top left, mid right, lower left, and the bottom right. 
Then I added lines depicting movement that are directly above and below the chess piece, and a parachute connected to the top of the chess piece that is leaning to the left. I decided to add those details into the image because I figured that it would add more visual interest and the piece would become more balanced.

After I knew what I wanted to create and how to create it I proceeded with the steps from there. I started to make some page-sized sketches of the chess piece in my sketchbook using all three of my pencils (HB, 2B, and 6B) also a ruler, sharpener, and a kneadable eraser as my tools. 

Once I got all my tools ready, I started off by making an outline of everything that was going to be filled in with value. Then, after that was done I started to fill in the drawings with surprise surprise, Value! I made a gradient value on the clouds (Edge of the clouds are dark, and their tone starts to fade inwards), and I placed the chess piece on an angle in the light to get the highlight and shadow of the chess piece just right.
 For the parachute, I made a pattern. I shaded the 1st and 3rd section of the parachute with my 2B pencil horizontally. I shaded everything in with my HB pencil first, then I went on to the 2B and then finally 6B. If I really needed to, I would've used my HB pencil to shade over certain areas more than once.

 After I had finished my final draft, I cleaned it up a bit and then took a photograph of it. I then proceeded into the computer lab to start cropping, grey scaling, and using the burn tool on Adobe Illustrator CS6 to edit the photograph. First, I cropped the photos size, then I clicked on grey scale to make the image in black and white, and finally I used the burn tool to darken up the parachute (the burn tool is used to darken up selected areas of an image).  After ALL those steps were finished, I got to do the last task- putting the image on my blog and writing about it for a fabulous post. 

I gave my piece the title: Oh my, I'm falling!, because it's one of the first things I thought of while creating this piece- and also because I figured it would be a PERFECT title for my piece (I mean come on, you can't deny it).

Chess Piece Artist Statement

My chess piece is drawn fairly realistic in relation to it's proportion and value, since there is a reasonable amount of extension in the variety of the chess piece's value and the proportion is quite similar to the Rook that I was modelling the drawing after.

I created pattern in the piece by adding the parachute, since the parachute has a colour pattern on each of the parachute's sections (grey, white, grey). I created movement by adding lines directly above and below the chess piece to depict falling. Since the chess piece is on somewhat of an angle, it adds to the affect of it appearing to be falling, which creates movement. Following that, the clouds are also an example of rhythm, since the way that they are arranged creates balance and rhythm.

I used value throughout my composition by using value to help define most of my images and my focal point (the chess piece) with attention to realistic details and complexity. Adding value makes the composition seem more bold, professional, and optically striking to the viewers eye.

I chose to place my chess piece in my composition on a third of a way in and a third of a way down. This is referring to the rule of thirds (rule of thirds is where a picture/image is divided up into thirds). Or, to put it simply, I placed the chess piece to the mid right.

I made my chess piece the focal point by adding an extensive amount of value in it, and by placing it on an angle. By placing it on an angle, it gives a different view than the other images in my composition, thus making it draw your focus more than the other images in my piece.

While typing this post, I felt enlightened a bit when I figured that this composition reminded me of a book our teacher read to us during art class one day titled: "The Z Was Zapped". It reminded me of this fond memory because in the book it displays letters of the alphabet being destroyed by something that started with the same letter as itself in a somewhat dramatic way, such as the Z being zapped, the M was mashed, etc. The way that the chess piece is somehow appearing to be escaping or arriving somewhere comically in this composition reminded me of that book in a strange way (talk about nostalgic right?).

In conclusion, I believe that this assignment turned out pretty well. I learned about and got to use different tools and ideas while fabricating this piece, and I feel that it was an excellent assignment to help teach me about different ways to create value and how to use Adobe Photoshop CS6.