Need some artistic feed back..

[Derek Gilmer]

A artistic lines and style are not my strongest side. I'm more of a bullet points and programmatic kind of guy. So I'm reaching out to you artistic types for some advise and criticism on my design(s) for a chess set I'd like to make. My goal is to build the board and turn the pieces from start to finish. I've got walnut, cherry, and maple from a local saw mill that I helped him saw up and will do the drying and finish milling in my shop. The same goes for the chess pieces. I'm using walnut for the black pieces and am in flux between cherry and maple for the white pieces. I'm leaning toward maple with the thought of using some birdseye maple for the king and queen to make them stand out. If I do birdseye for while there will need to be something pronounced for the black king and queen to balance the extra flair the birdeye brings. I am also planning on going with only a clear finish for the pieces.

I started by sketching the queen and a few other pieces to get a rough idea of what they should look like. Then played around on the lathe tonight to make a queen out of a chunk of cherry I had laying around. As you can tell I missed my sketch by quite a bit. Which is OK, after further review I"m going to tweak her lines a bit more. My goals for the pieces are to be more representative of their names than many of the chess sets I've seen. The queen should have graceful feminine curves while being the second largest piece on her side.

Here was my first sketch of one half of a queen:


And what came off the lathe:

First off I ran out of space to add the crown and her poor neck snapped off so pardon the super glue necklace she has on . On top of that the balance is way off. The head is out of proportion with the body. And the skirt section is much to wide for the graceful look I wanted.

I imported my sketch into a vector program, doubled it and over-layed it on my turning. The sketch landed somewhere between the turned piece and my finished goal below. I adjusted the lines from my original sketch to fit the look I'm going for and ended up here:
=

The shoulders still seem a bit wide and tall to me. Plus the head needs a little curve to it instead of a straight line.


So my questions are (see more bullet points ):

• Any ideas on a "fancy" dark wood to go with the birds eye maple king and queen. I'd prefer to go with a North American species and use only a clear finish.
• Stylistic feedback on the queen's design.

As I finish more sketches and sample pieces I'll append them here. Hopefully it will be a nice running commentary on the process.

[David E Keller]

Kudos to you for taking on such a demanding project! I agree with your assessment of the final queen sketch. I also would consider a soft shoulder on the queen to add more femininity... Perhaps even an 'all soft curves' design with rounded hips, etc.

As for dark North America species, Texas ebony comes to mind. Claro walnut(+/- burl) would be another, and it's probably closer to the maple/birdseye maple counterpart.

I'm looking forward to seeing this project as it progresses!

[Derek Gilmer]

Kudos to you for taking on such a demanding project! I agree with your assessment of the final queen sketch. I also would consider a soft shoulder on the queen to add more femininity... Perhaps even an 'all soft curves' design with rounded hips, etc.

As for dark North America species, Texas ebony comes to mind. Claro walnut(+/- burl) would be another, and it's probably closer to the maple/birdseye maple counterpart.

I'm looking forward to seeing this project as it progresses!

Wow, I can't believe I didn't think of walnut burl. The images of the claro burls are even better. Thanks!

I'll play around with softening the curves. So far the other pieces I've sketched all have a few hard edges. It was a bit of a theme I was going with but I've only got the king and knight near final draft so that theme isn't set in stone. The main thing I like about having the sharp edges is that it is a subtle reference to how deadly of a piece the queen is on the board. I've been known to over think such things though.

[David Reed]

Looks like an ambitious project but off to a good start. The latest sketch is quite nice.
Re the dark wood, walnut burl would be a very nice counterpart but dyed maple burl would be readily available, a nice match yet the color contrast you wish to achieve.

[John Keeton]

Derek, I have never done chess pieces, but I would encourage you to sketch all of them prior to settling in for a design on any individual piece. Not only is scale important, but you will want the pieces to appear as an homogenous set when placed on the board. The bases will need to be the same size on all pieces, and the flow of each piece will need to match the base.

I differ from Keller, in that I do like the angular look, and I think that can be accomplished with femininity. Overall, I like your sketch, but I feel it needs to be slimmer. It appears you are very close to the concepts used by Da Vinci on human body proportions as they regard the placement of the various major lines.

[Prashun Patel]

I'm most impressed with yr vectoring overlay! That's cool!

I'm no expert but I think the sketch looks great.

However, I think you should sketch all yr pieces and make sure they compliment each other. It's a set, and I think how the other pieces take the angles and dimensions will dictate how the queen should look.

This is a bucket list item for me; eager to follow yr progress.
- p

[Baxter Smith]

Sounds like a nice project Derek. I turned a bishop and a pawn 40 years ago for an old and very delicate ivory set I have. They sort of match!
Your final sketch looks good but I would agree with sketching them all to see the proportions of each to the other. Perhaps then you could slim down the queen depending on how delicate a look you liked. How about using a contrasting wood for the crown if you want to set it apart? Gold leaf? Have never seen that done, but it was just a random thought that passed through my head!

[Derek Gilmer]

Thanks for the encouragement to finish the set sketch. I went ahead and committed ideas to pencil at breakfast then vectored them in and tweaked some things. Here is a view of the pieces. Mostly to final scale. Sorry about the color mismatch. Call it computer grain inconsistencies

Looking at them together here are my thoughts on them.

Pawn - A bit chunky looking but I'm not sure that is a bad thing, I like it and think it will feel good in the hand while playing.
Rook - meh.. a bit boring but I haven't found a fancy way to make a castle with out a lot of carving.
Bishop - I like the form but need to make the hat part a little thinner.
Knight - stylized mace instead of a horse. I thought of turning the spikes then carving them down to points. I'll do a practice and see if that works or if I need to turn a ball and attach spikes.
Queen - I like her. I tried making it a little skinnier but like the added heft a little.
King - probably my least favorite piece right now. I'm going for a strong masculine look but can't seem to get the shape quite right.

[Cecil Walborn]

I like your drawings real well. I think you have done excellent job on designing them. I have been ask a lot of times about turning chess pieces, but have not done so as of yet. What you design and turn is up to you, cause if you look at all the different chess pieces thou out the centuries I think you will see a lot of different designs and shapes. As I see it you design and turn what looks and feels good to you will be perfect in you eyes.
Cecil