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This chess board has been in the works for way too long. I started with a plan for a basic chess board, but being inexperienced, I started by building the outside wall. The original plan was to build a platform of floor tiles that would fit inside the wall, with the board on top of that. Since I neglected to use a brace to straighten my walls, the floor tiles didn’t fit, and the outside wall sat on my shelf for several months waiting for inspiration to hit.
The board is 8" square, using the 1" square tiles from #201. The total project is 14" square, and about 4-5" tall without pieces. (I know this is over the 12" square rule, I e-mailed Scott about what category to put it in before I entered it, and he said this one)
It never did, and after I got tired of it sitting there, I decided to just go ahead and fill the inside with plaster. I sealed the outside wall, and poured a mix of Hydrocal and (unused) kitty litter (the idea was to lighten it a tad, and give it a bit of color). After it was almost dry, I dragged a paper towel across the top to level/texture it. It only took about a week for it to dry, and that was with it constanty being put in the oven and taken out. Once hardened, I carved most of the insides out (in hindsight, I should have just glued a block of foam under most of it, easier to carve out) to hit the 70% HA requirement.
At this point, I had a chess board, but it was very plain, in fact, much too plain. I decided to turn it into a fountain, since I really wanted to try out some envirotex. This is still several months before the HADD announcement of the restricted category, so I got lucky there. I went ahead with the idea, adding another layer of bricks to the outside, then painted. I went with the basic Gothic colors, using a slightly heavy hand (party accidental, partly on purpose) to give it a rough look, as dictated by the haphazard build of the walls (built without a form). The bottom of the pool was painted a dark blue, along with the foam piece supporting the chess board, and the chess board was painted individually, and then assembled.
The first layer of envirotex was tinted a nice dark blue with paint. The next few (I used 3-4 layers total) were tinted with a decreasing amount of blue ink, and the final was totally clear. 30 minute epoxy (couldn’t find any 5 minute) was used for the water effects, and I decided to spread some over the top of the whole pool to get rid of the glass smooth look of the envirotex. Fishing line spouts were added, a couple more dots of touch up paint where I had chipped some, and a bit of matte finish on the board to kill the gloss on some spilled envirotex, and the board was finished.
The pieces are cast from molds bought from Prince August (http://www.princeaugust.ie), in lead free pewter. The silver pieces were finished with steel wool and a dremel tool wire brush tool. The gold pieces were painted with a liquid fake gold leaf product bought from Michaels, then aged with some India inks (mostly black with a tint of red).
Overall, this was a really fun project, since I got to try out so many new products and techniques, and am considering building a ton of them to resell; I've had several suggestions from my art teacher, friends, and family that I should be able to get some good money for them.
THE_MOMH - Display my Hirst Arts Buildings and enter in the HADD
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Aug. 20, 2005, 12:15PM
By: YRM |
This is an absolutely awesome concept and I must admit, I missed it the first time I looked. At first, I thought it was just a water channel around a chess board, but, now I realize that the chessboard is floating on the water after someone mentioned it and I took a second look.
The water looks great, the craftsmanship is very clean.
If you ever wanted to take the floating concept in a different direction... Light bricks, slightly wider channels, fountains from corners, and make the board from squares of 4 pieces of 1" wood plank with bleached wood and tan wood.
Then you could see more under the board, and, being wood, it'd really look like it was capable of floating and finish off the illusion.
Anyway, this is very nice. This chess set could easily be in a catalogue for house warming gifts and things like that.
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cool chessboard... who would have thought we'd need a whole catagory just for them LOLOLOL
your water color looks good too
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Great idea with the water effects around the chess board. Looks like a great piece!
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It probably weighs 15-20 lbs, looks a lot heavier, but the bottom is hollowed out a bunch, which reduces the weight.
Thanks for the look,
Bryan
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Holy. Moly. How heavy is that? Did you say somewhere? That's a really cool chess set. Good job.
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