DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION GALLERY

YOU MUST THINK FIRST BEFORE YOU MOVE

I’ve been inspired by chess lately: its invocation in hip hop, the sculptural nature of the pieces, the graphic styling of the checker-patterned board: it’s ripe with reference that resonates with me.

In this suite of works, I drew chess pieces in a family-style portrait using my beloved pastel digital brush. Next, I used those drawings to create an animation that demonstrates the rules regarding each piece. Along the way, I captured draft versions of each that illustrate the choices I made later for each work.

You Must Think First Before You Move, Valerie Caesar, 2026.

THE STILL RENDERING

For example, I was interested in rendering the chess pieces in a near photorealistic way that expressed the direction that a natural light source would hit the high points of each piece.

You Must Think First Before You Move (unlit), Valerie Caesar, 2026.

But I found that I really liked the way the raw, unlit pieces looked atop the grain of the digital paper I chose, so I saved a version of that style before I added highlights (on a non-destructible layer). There’s so much to be said for non-digital, physical, tactile drawing, but replicability and flexibility aren’t one of those things. For an iterative and archival artist like myself, digital media provides infinite possibilities, and the ability to revisit and seamlessly evolve old ideas into new ones, without destroying history. Rather, it creates a visual dialogue that offers an understanding of the personal creative process.

THE ANIMATION

My initial desire was to create an animation that zoomed-in in such a way that showed off the beautiful wood grain effect I was able to achieve using specialty brushes. I was going to do something graphic with text to label each piece by name, which made me realize I didn’t know which piece was which — because I don’t know how to play chess, despite being taught a handful of times in life. This led me to a search for the rules of chess, and if you watch the animation (with sound), you’ll see the rabbit hole I went down. In addition to the infinitely relevant Wu-Tang classic “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” I made use of some vintage YouTube audio — a chess lesson advising on the rules regarding each piece that I chopped and screwed. So really, this animation is a resource — don’t say I never taught you nothing!

You Must Think First Before You Move (animation), Valerie Caesar, 2026.

A CLOSER LOOK

Watch this short video at the full screen setting to see the making of You Must Think First Before You Move from a behind-the-scenes perspective, and to view it in closer detail. And as a bonus, here’s a version that played with the original text idea before I abandoned it for the audio.