Title: The Dreaming Pawn
Date: 08/07 - 11/07/08
Medium: Photoshop CS3, wacob tablet
Description: I'm happy with this one, because I managed to use some of the stuff I've learned during the last months to work more efficiently, and so only spent about 20-25 hours spread out over 4 days on this (doing it simultaneously with the "Quitting ICC" chess cartoon and the Kramnik portrait), which is something new but VERY welcome; not having to labour over everything forever to get it right. Larger version here. Note the stuffed teddy-knight! That's by the way not a small shield he has a front of him, he's shaped like a chess Knight piece and so has no legs. There's also a Knight icon on the bottom, although it might be difficult to spot. Look for the blue eye! Note also the checkered pattern on the grass.

Did you notice the presence of a hidden man in the grass? One viewer cleverly pointed this out with a silhouette drawing:

Another commenter observed: What a *lazy* pawn she is! Not putting her weight at all in the battle raging around her. Or maybe she's the A2 pawn and quite bored because the action is elsewhere on the board?

And the explanation is, that this is the g-pawn. There's a tiara/crown thing lying in the grass next to her hand, and I orginally intended to detail it a bit more and include her letter on it, but I couldn't be bothered in the end. Think it would have been too dominating, visually, to make a yellow crown in the grass, so kept it simple. I want to include the letters of the pawns on them though, just have to figure out where and how. As a tattoo? On their clothes? It's still up for debate. I've drawn the a-pawn, she's the other white-braid girl in the gallery looking over her shoulder, and can be identified as the a-pawn because of the square she's standing on.

This is the real version of the old chess cartoon:

A lot of people have asked me about the line "find a virile Knight to save", so here's the background story of its creation. I had just drawn my very first chess picture, the white queen with the staff, and a fellow player said:

"Nice job. She's beautiful and I love her eyes. Now, how about a virile knight to protect her?

Since the game is chess, the Knights are slowmoving donkeys and the Queens are the ultimate warriors on the board, wouldn't it be the other way around? The cartoon was spawned in reply to this.

Details images available: