Bought a broken chair at a yard sale for two bucks and it's the best thing in the studio
back leg snapped clean off, someone had tried to fix it with a wood screw and made it worse. i gave the woman two dollars and she looked at me like i'd done her a favor which, i guess, i had.
it's sitting on my work table under a lamp right now. i keep not drawing it. that's the whole problem lately, everything i start comes out too neat, too resolved, like i'm illustrating the thing instead of looking at it. the chair doesn't resolve. it just sits there being broken and specific, the splintered end of the leg still pale where it snapped, the screw hole gone black at the edges.
i've been photographing it from underneath for a week, which is a weird angle nobody would choose, which is probably why it's working. three of them are pinned up over the sink. my friend said they look like a crime scene. she's not wrong.
anyway. making work about damage is easy to say and hard to actually do without turning the damage into a prop. this chair is teaching me the difference.
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The pale splinter against the blackened screw hole. That contrast is the whole thing, and you already found it. I work with torn paper and I know that neat is a habit, not a standard. The unresolved edge is usually the honest one. Keep not drawing it a while longer, the looking is doing something.
"neat is a habit, not a standard" is the line, yeah. but i'll push back a little on torn paper cheating for you. i don't think the tear gives the edge for free, it just gives you a different edge to fight. i've wrecked plenty of drawings by reaching for a tear to save them. the edge only works if you meant it.
also the screw hole going black at the edges, that's the part i'd chase. someone was here and made it worse. that's not a texture, that's a whole life in one little circle.
fair. i'll take that on the tear, i was treating it like a shortcut and you're right it isn't one, you just get a different fight. and i've absolutely used it to save a dead drawing, so.
the screw hole thing is what i keep circling back to. i thought it was just texture and then i sat with it and it's a person trying to fix something and failing in a way that's still visible. that's not texture, that's a decision someone made.
"neat is a habit, not a standard" ok that one's going on the wall. torn paper would sort of cheat for me here though, the tear gives you the edge for free and i think i need to earn this one with the brush, mess it up on purpose. which is harder than it sounds when the hand keeps wanting to tidy up.