Chess Piece Composition (Knight)

           The final drawing I made was set in a dark arena. The background is made with cage bars with chains wrapping around them. The chains help the viewer lead its eyes to the main part of the drawing; this also creates great focal points leading to the main chess piece. The foreground of the drawing shows a “Bishop” chess piece being annihilated by the main piece, the knight. I emphasized the feeling of defeat by having the bishop shattered into pieces; this creates movement and rhythm by repeating the broken pieces. The broken pieces also form a line at a 45-degree angle leading up to the knight; This also creates another focal point leading to the knight.  The knight is also angled at a 45-degree angle and is placed above the bishop to show power over its opponent. I drew the knight with the most value to force the viewer's eyes to the main piece.
             To show realism in this drawing, I tried preventing myself from making too many outlines. As I look at a real knight chess piece, the values shown in the real chess piece shows value with only shadows. The proportion of the chess piece is the key to creating a highly realistic drawing. For example, the base height the chess piece is about the same height as the horse head. The width of the base is same size as the length of the body. The piece also has an exact amount of five horse hair strands running down the back of the chess piece. 
             Value also shows a key aspect in realism too. The left side of the chess piece is much brighter than the right side because the light is coming from the top left corner of the drawing. The main chess piece is centred  to the right side of the drawing while the demolished bishop is centred at the bottom of the drawing. A scoreboard is placed in the middle of the drawing, but chains holding the scoreboard lead the viewers eyes down to the main piece. I drew value 

            The vertical steel bars in the background are repeated to form a square arena to show pattern. By making many steel bars like this, it represents a feeling the arena will be repeatedly used for battles like this one. I noticed there was a large area of negative space near the middle of the drawing; I then drew a scoreboard to cover the negative space. There is also many other negative areas throughout the drawing, for this reason, I drew small shattered pieces leftover from the demolished bishop scattered around the chessboard.