Image to e4: Surreal and thought provoking

Chess by ~F31dak1n on deviantART

While looking for an image for my woefully irregular Image to e4, this caught my eye.

In the moment I saw it and cocked my head, my daughter (looking over my shoulder) said, "I get it! They're like pieces!"

So something like this:



What do you think?

Lost in the woods

Chess, Renaissance Festival by ~HeartbreakerStudios on deviantART

There's a little whimsy in there- playing against a plant today? Mostly a lot of sadness, though...fenced off, abandoned, tilting over.

Also resembles what it feels like whenever you look back over your shoulder after giving up the game for a while. Seems a lost cause, but...

Sweep away the leaves, clear off the chair and it's almost good as new.



Also, I wasn't digging the two mini columns- felt really cluttered.

Yes- that's what they are.

chess by ~b3njamin on deviantART

Clever chess set. I feel like I've seen this picture elsewhere, recently.

Jaque mate

Yeah- sometimes it's like that:

Jaque mate by InpuUpUaut

Dark and morbid: yes.
Brutal yet satisfying: indeed!

Remember folks:

Castle early and castle often!

Image to e4 (Working Title for the Weekly Image)

We're Playing Chess by ComeWatchMyArt

"You can go anytime during the day to Lindenhof (it's a little bit on top of Zurich, so you have a beautiful view over Zurich) and you'll see some old men, who are playing chess."

I think I've got the position worked out after the jump.

My guess is that it is White to move, given the way the guy is standing on c1.

Be sure to check out ComeWatchMyArt's gallery of landscapes. Some fantastic images there, especially Snowscape.

This feature needs a title

Chess Globe v3

I chose this image by evilhomer145 as my first weekly image. Prints are available for purchase through deviantART.

I don't know if the images I choose will be limited to "art" or if they'll include other things I find like interesting player photos and stuff. Any suggestions on naming this feature is appreciated :)

And it only took like 15 edits of this post to get the thumbnail and links formatted correctly and displayed to my satisfaction :P

Burning the midnight oil

Whew! Got the banner completed! Please pop over to the ZOtherOne's gallery and take a look at his work. I can't say enough how thrilled I am that he let me use his picture.

I spent a good while scouring Deviant Art for the perfect image. His captured the sense of journey, fear, excitement, hopes and dreams that most of are moved by when we play chess.

The board in the picture belonged to his grandfather. My grandfather is probably the reason I keep coming back to chess as I get older. As a kid, we played a game and I stuck a Knight on f6, a Bishop on g7 and castled short. He called it an Indian defense, said it was good and that he had to work to beat me.

I'm sure he handled me better than he let on, but his words have stuck with me.

I haven't seen my grandfather in about ten years. My grandparents divorced and the family as a whole split for a little while. Deep down, part of the reason I play is the hope that I'll run into him. He was always ahead of the curve with computers. He set me up with a couple of chess games over a modem when I was a kid, so maybe he's on FICS. Maybe he's gonna be at the Baltimore Open in January.

A few years ago my mother gave me his first edition copy of Rueben Fine's Chess the Easy Way. She'd had it in a box of things she took from his farm before it was sold after the divorce. I never really looked at it- its in descriptive, after all!- until recently when I started to miss him.

He taught me about a lot more than chess- computers, electricity, radio signals, weather, deer tracking, that you don't have to hold everything inside. I just want another game with him, to show him I've learned and gotten better. I hope he'd be proud of me.