Checkers, Anyone?

For the record, I don’t play checkers. I know the fundamentals, but my brain has never fully grasped the strategies involved. As for chess — which is also played on a board with 64 squares — yes, I can play, but I choose not to. Although I find the game intriguing and love reading about chess players and memorable matches, I’d rather not be at the board myself.

For what it’s worth, I’ve studied chess. I’ve learned the principles well, and I have a wicked opening game. I know how to be a good chess player, and on the occasions when I have played, I’ve won my share of games. Overall, though, I don’t have the patience for chess. The act of analyzing each piece, my opponent’s pieces, my game plan, my opponent’s possible game plan, and the potential results of each move is too much for me.

In many ways, my feelings about chess and checkers is similar to my attitude about geometry and perspective. They all give me a splitting headache! So, it’s only right, I suppose, that I should put them together to create my own checkerboard in perspective.

Frankly, folks, I think I deserve a round of applause for creating this — not once, but twice. Here’s the story.

I’m reading Perspective Made Easy by Ernest R. Norling. Even with Norling’s excellent instructions, perspective is never going to be easy for me, but I do highly recommend the book. I have learned a lot from it, and when I came to the exercise to draw a 64-square checkerboard in perspective, I had to give it a try.

I sat at my table with pencils, paper, and T-square. I carefully measured and created my drawing. I did a good job, too. The drawing above is not the one I drew at the table. I tried to scan it because I wanted to use my Paint program to color the squares. The lines on my drawing were too light. I could have gone back and re-done it with a marker, but I was already at the computer.

Why not create a digital checkerboard? The idea challenged me, and it was a good practice exercise for all I’d learned. So, the illustration above is my digital re-creation of my drawing, complete with my center diagonal line — which provides the measurements in perspective — and a few extra lines here and there.

The digital drawing isn’t perfect. Unlike the pencil drawing I did, this one wasn’t carefully measured out. Actually, I didn’t want it to be too perfect. I wanted to make it fun. Chess and checkers should be fun, I guess, even though, for me, they’re not. Perspective has never been fun either, so this is my way of making it a little bit enjoyable.

The best thing, of course, is that I really learned a lot from this. I may never be much of a checkers players, but at least I can draw the board now.