Four Seasons chess set - winter

At the end of autumn, I had collected the raw material for the pieces in my Four Seasons chess set. So that means that the final phase of creating this chess set would happen over the winter. Here's what I used for the various pieces, and what they look like 'raw'.

Sycamore 'wings' for knights, and chestnuts ('conkers') for elephants:

Pine cones for rooks, and walnuts for kings:

Acorns for pawns, and beech nuts for ferzes:













Couldn't resist putting the unpainted pieces on the board!

At first, my plan was to paint the pieces entirely in the four traditional colours (white, green, red and black, for winter, spring, summer and autumn, respectively). But then, seeing them unpainted on the board, I felt it was better just to paint the bases. That would still allow (more subtle) differentiation of the pieces, but keep the autumnal colours. So this is what the four sets look like, in their corners of the board:

Winter

Spring

Summer

Autumn

And the full board then looks like this:

I'm glad I decided not to paint the pieces completely, but just paint the bases. Really allowed the natural colours to remain. It was fun thinking the whole design through, and completing a Four Seasons chess set over a period of four seasons gave it an extra dimension.