How do you create your pieces? Do you sketch them out first? Picture them in your mind and try to push that through your finger tips? Sculpt in another medium first? I’m curious because I think I’m still trying to find my “best method.”
I do sketch some things out on a white board, and that typically works well, but I also have a tendency to just sit down and go for it. This is one of those cases where this method has come back to bite me.
I’m working on a chess set with glow in the dark pieces. I finished up the pawns for the black side and I’m quite happy with them. But I’ve run into a little situation with the rear pieces.
If you have a look here, you’ll see the first version of the rooks I made. They look a lot like the pawns, and for the rooks it kind of works. However I decided this wasn’t the best look for the rest of the rear pieces, so I decided to work up new ones. This lead to revision two:
Rev 2
I like them, but unfortunately the glow glass was a bit thick and lead to checking (internal cracking) under the clear glass I encased it in. Back to the drawing board.
I want to take a moment and say, I don’t blame the glow glass. Glow Glass is a perfectly good product, but it presents certain working challenges in working with it. Unlike cadmium colors that boil if you abuse them, you often don’t find out there’s a problem until the other side of the kiln cycle. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them, you just have to be careful and work by the glass’ rules. This means babying it in the flame so you don’t cook out the glow material, and not encasing thick areas of glow with anything. I’ve had a little bit of time working with it now and I’d still recommend it, but given the cost, you really want to keep the mistakes to a minimum.
But, I pushed on to the third version and this one’s the keeper.
Rook take 3
I’m kind of glad it went to a third round, it forced me to rethink where I was placing and how I was using the glow material on the pieces, and it forced a slight design change for the rest of the rear pieces that I think will work quite nicely.
Now I just have to find time to finish them and make the white side pieces.