Chess: Butterfly Board
Oct. 16th, 2020 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellerThis is still the backside of the board I'm making for yhlee. It's glued together and almost finished now! I'm super happy with it, too! :D (Objectively, it's crappy papercrafting, but hey, chess players aren't objective about things, because objectivity is an attitude problem that loses games...)
As you can see, I decided on a really, really bold design. XD My boyfriend, whose artistic expertise I trust perfectly, calls it gaudy and exaggerated, but then, he doesn't play chess, so he can't actually judge board design. LOL I will admit the red border is extreme! It was, well, an entirely unreasonable decision to go through with this. The outer border is again selfmade marbled paper, this time in black-and-gold. I think it matches the cream-and-gold light squares nicely. Same style of acrylic abuse, anyway.
I'm calling this the Butterfly Board, because I put these tiny paper punch-outs in the corners... I figured, I'm going for "19th century representative board style" anyway, so why not add some decorations?It's already glittery, so it wasn't going to be a particularly sedate design, no matter what! Also, I vaguely remembered yhlee likes butterflies. The numbers and letters are handwritten because I didn't have any black stickers like that and I didn't want to use the golden ones again. (Boring! Also: ugly. I tested the effect and didn't like it.)
Of course, I did a bit of a sanity check! Before I varnish this (which will take at least a few days of drying before I can do that) I decided to test what the board behaves like, that is, how well (or not-well) it supports the typical eye movements that happen when evaluating a chess position. In my opinion, that's just as important as having the board look nice. And anywayyhlee doesn't have many boards yet so I wouldn't have given him an entirely unplayable one that's decoration-only... I'm not that mean. XD
(Yes, I was prepared to just overpaint that border if it turned out it made the board unfit for actual chess... I may be unreasonable and erratic in my choices, but I do learn from mistakes and correct them if necessary! LOL)
I used the pieces from my travel set for this: not optimal, because they're slightly too large, but I don't have pieces that exactly match the size ofyhlee's. (Also, I think it will look much better with cream and actual black pieces rather than these wooden ones. Anyway: can't change that right now.)
This is a position from Adorjan - Mukhin 1973, a game that's featured in the Stean book pretty early, so,yhlee, you've either already seen it or you'll see it soon. XD Also, the opening is the Ruy Lopez, which I like.
Anyway: turns out that hey, this board works perfectly fine! Better than it reasonably should, actually! (But then, again: chess is not a reasonable process...) Playing through that game, the red didn't distract me at all. Rather, it... kept my gaze from running off the board?!? Which means it actually helped me focus. This is an interesting and funny effect! XD (Also: I might have to make a similar board, with some modifications obviously, for myself... LOL)
The board still has one issue, and that's some areas being glossy while others aren't, but varnish will fix that.
yhlee, I guess you'll have to just test if it also works for you. (No way of telling without actually using the board, unfortunately.) LOL Either way, you'll have a board with one semi-reasonable (the wooden one, which is just bad woodworking but a sane design) and one entirely unreasonable (this one) side, and I hope this will be FUN!
yhlee. It's glued together and almost finished now! I'm super happy with it, too! :D (Objectively, it's crappy papercrafting, but hey, chess players aren't objective about things, because objectivity is an attitude problem that loses games...)As you can see, I decided on a really, really bold design. XD My boyfriend, whose artistic expertise I trust perfectly, calls it gaudy and exaggerated, but then, he doesn't play chess, so he can't actually judge board design. LOL I will admit the red border is extreme! It was, well, an entirely unreasonable decision to go through with this. The outer border is again selfmade marbled paper, this time in black-and-gold. I think it matches the cream-and-gold light squares nicely. Same style of acrylic abuse, anyway.
I'm calling this the Butterfly Board, because I put these tiny paper punch-outs in the corners... I figured, I'm going for "19th century representative board style" anyway, so why not add some decorations?
yhlee likes butterflies. The numbers and letters are handwritten because I didn't have any black stickers like that and I didn't want to use the golden ones again. (Boring! Also: ugly. I tested the effect and didn't like it.)Of course, I did a bit of a sanity check! Before I varnish this (which will take at least a few days of drying before I can do that) I decided to test what the board behaves like, that is, how well (or not-well) it supports the typical eye movements that happen when evaluating a chess position. In my opinion, that's just as important as having the board look nice. And anyway
yhlee doesn't have many boards yet so I wouldn't have given him an entirely unplayable one that's decoration-only... I'm not that mean. XD(Yes, I was prepared to just overpaint that border if it turned out it made the board unfit for actual chess... I may be unreasonable and erratic in my choices, but I do learn from mistakes and correct them if necessary! LOL)
I used the pieces from my travel set for this: not optimal, because they're slightly too large, but I don't have pieces that exactly match the size of
yhlee's. (Also, I think it will look much better with cream and actual black pieces rather than these wooden ones. Anyway: can't change that right now.)This is a position from Adorjan - Mukhin 1973, a game that's featured in the Stean book pretty early, so,
yhlee, you've either already seen it or you'll see it soon. XD Also, the opening is the Ruy Lopez, which I like.Anyway: turns out that hey, this board works perfectly fine! Better than it reasonably should, actually! (But then, again: chess is not a reasonable process...) Playing through that game, the red didn't distract me at all. Rather, it... kept my gaze from running off the board?!? Which means it actually helped me focus. This is an interesting and funny effect! XD (Also: I might have to make a similar board, with some modifications obviously, for myself... LOL)
The board still has one issue, and that's some areas being glossy while others aren't, but varnish will fix that.
yhlee, I guess you'll have to just test if it also works for you. (No way of telling without actually using the board, unfortunately.) LOL Either way, you'll have a board with one semi-reasonable (the wooden one, which is just bad woodworking but a sane design) and one entirely unreasonable (this one) side, and I hope this will be FUN!
