# The tearing stops at the edge of the arm

> A forearm sliced into even bands with every second one shifted sideways, both edges turned into square teeth, and a flat orange field behind it that has not moved at all.

August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-comb-teeth-on-a-moving-arm

A solid orange rectangle. On it, in cream, one forearm and an open hand, reaching up to the right.

The arm is cut into horizontal bands of even height, and every second band has slid sideways, so both
its edges have turned into square teeth.

The orange behind it has not moved at all.

That is the whole drawing, and it is not a drawing of an arm. It is a drawing of the part of a second
the arm spent crossing the frame.

## Why is the arm broken up and the background not?

Because a frame lifted out of moving footage is built from two passes taken a moment apart, and the
things that shifted in between are the ones that land twice.

None of that needs knowing to see what it did. The damage has an outline, and the outline is the
arm's. Every tooth, every displaced band, every step stops dead
where the cream stops. The orange carries no slicing of its own anywhere in the field. Damage that picks one
region and crowds it is a reliable report of a picture's history, which is also the case [where a
line of type was added after the picture was
made](/stories/the-damage-is-worst-around-the-letters). The one exception is the block's
own edge. At the top right, where the fingers ran past the boundary, the rectangle steps out with
them for the height of a single band and then goes straight again. The field did not move; a slice
of it was carried along by what did.

## Why is the hand further out of line than the elbow?

Because the far end of a swung arm travels furthest in the same instant, and the bands record it.

At the bottom left the elbow end still stacks up square — the bands there are barely a nudge out of
true. A third of the way up they begin to stagger. At the top the fingers are thrown so far sideways
that they read as four separate cream tabs floating away from the hand they came off. So the drawing
is a measurement as much as a picture: displacement increasing along one limb, from nothing at the
joint to its widest at the fingertips. A shape shifted evenly would read as bad registration. This
one has a gradient, and the gradient is the speed.

## Where is the rest of the body?

There is none. A forearm and an open hand, alone on a flat field.

No shoulder, no head, nothing for the arm to belong to and no room for it to be in. The gesture
stays unreadable — reaching, waving, catching, stopping something — and nothing in the frame settles
it, because the frame does not contain enough to settle anything. That is the ordinary condition of
a single frame. Somebody kept one and did not keep the rest, and what survived is a fraction of a
second of somebody's arm with no before and no after attached. There is no story implied. What is on
the shirt is a moving thing stopped, and the marks the stopping left.

## Does anything here need clearing?

No. An invented silhouette on a flat rectangle copies no footage and no photograph.

A hand shape belongs to nobody, and the tearing is a property of equipment rather than anyone's
work. If a real clip is the point — a frame out of a film, a match, a music video — that is
licensable material and the permission becomes part of the job; rights holders license stills
constantly. If it is not the point, there is nothing to gain from taking the paperwork on, and the
invented arm makes the better shirt anyway: a recognisable still is a frame a lot of people already
own. Style has no owner. A work does.

## Does it work for something that is not an arm?

Yes, for anything that crosses a frame faster than the frame can hold it.

A dog mid-shake. A hand on a record. A cyclist's leg at the bottom of the stroke. A curtain in a
draught. What the subject wants is a clear outline and one direction of travel, since those are the
two things the teeth report — a shape with a fussy edge loses the comb in its own detail. For a
group, four people and four gestures on one palette, every tooth cut to the same height. For two,
one arm thrown wide and one still square. The subject can also be the equipment itself rather than
what it caught, which is what [a pointer left sitting on top of a
picture](/stories/the-cursor-left-in-the-picture) does.

## Will it look like the print went wrong?

For a second, and then the regularity gives it away.

A misprint drifts. The offset varies down the garment, the edges go soft, and it wanders across
everything rather than picking a subject. This is tidy: every band the same height, every shift
horizontal, every one along the same axis, and all of it confined to one shape. A fault does not
choose the arm and leave the field alone. The second tell is that the damage is the subject. There
is nothing else in the picture for it to be happening to — no scene, no background, no text. Take
the teeth away and there is a cream arm on an orange rectangle, and nothing worth printing.

## Does it print well?

Two inks on washed charcoal, and the shape is close to ideal for fabric.

Cream on orange, both flat, and every boundary in the arm is a hard vertical or horizontal step —
the easiest kind of edge to hold. The teeth want cutting coarser than a screen would draw them:
bands deep enough to count from across a room, rather than the fine ones that fill in and turn the
comb into a blur. Flat colour with hard edges is what fabric likes, which is [why a sky that came
out in steps prints better than the smooth one it was meant to
be](/stories/the-gradient-that-came-out-in-stripes). The orange block is speckled and
eroded along its edges rather than ruled, so the artwork does not sit on the chest as a rectangle
glued on. Charcoal, washed black and deep brown all hold the pair; a pale shirt would need the
orange to darken, since cream on orange on white loses its outer boundary. The inner hairlines
dividing each cream band are the one fine element, and they can be dropped without losing anything.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the frame at [JustOG](/) — what was moving, how far out of line the far end of it got, and
what colour the field behind it is.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Every second band, one direction, one arm. The orange it happened on is exactly where it started.