Take an unclear middle game position.
Where engines suggest different moves, where there is some tactical pressure and some "obvious looking" plans. Maybe where there are 20 moves within one pawn from the best one.
This way viewers can ponder over the position a long time without it becoming boring.
I'd be inclined to paint the board set up with only the first move (probably e4) played. I fancy it plays on the imagination a little more than knowing the outcome of the game. The possibilities are almost endless :)
My favorite idea. As a painting, this would probably look best.
I agree, it has the tension of a great battle about to unfold.
Microsoft Paint [1][2] is a simple computer graphics program that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program mainly opens and saves files as Windows bitmap (24-bit, 256 color, 16 color, and monochrome, all with the .bmp extension), JPEG, GIF (without animation or transparency, although the Windows 98 version, a Windows 95 upgrade, and the Windows NT4 version did support the latter), PNG (without alpha channel), and single-page TIFF. The program can be in color mode or two-color black-and-white, but there is no grayscale mode. For its simplicity, it rapidly became one of the most used applications in the early versions of Windows—introducing many to painting on a computer for the first time—and is still widely used for very simple image manipulation tasks.
Source: Wikipedia
I would take the opportunity to create your own puzzle and paint that. That way, you could demonstrate your artistry both with the paint brushes and the chess board.