For two years I've painted sitting on a dining chair. Solid teak, my mother-in-law's spare, the kind that's built for a forty-minute meal and not a four-hour session. I keep a folded bedsheet on it for cushioning and I keep telling myself I'll get a proper stool. I have told myself this since 2023.

The thing is, when I stand up after a long sitting my lower back is finished, and I've started noticing it in my line work. Ink lines get shorter. I stop reaching across the sheet. The drawing quietly shrinks to what's comfortable from one position, which for an urban sketcher is death, because the whole point is the long confident line that goes where it wants.

Friend who does oils told me to just get a draughtsman's chair, the ones with the footring, and I looked at the prices and went quiet. So now I'm doing the classic thing of researching it thoroughly for months while continuing to paint on a chair meant for eating rice and sambar.

Curious what everyone else is actually sitting on. Not the aspirational studio tour version, the real one.