Category: easels

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Plein air painting on the cheap

If you’re trying painting for the first time, it makes sense to use less-expensive equipment and supplies. Here are corners you can cut.

Early Spring on Beech Hill, 12X16, oil on canvas, $1449 framed includes shipping to continental US.

In 2018, when I first wrote about plein air painting on the cheap, this pine tripod easel cost $7.99. It’s ‘on sale’ for $14.99 now, a whopping 53% price increase in four years. That’s precisely why, if you’re interested in trying plein air painting for the first time, you should probably think about ways to do so on the cheap.

That’s the same easel I learned on in high school. I still have it today, tucked into the corner of my studio. It’s rickety, awkward—and it works. It was a standard style field easel until the invention of pochade boxes that screw onto tripods. My father painted his whole life with a similar, home-made model.

Bridle path, 11X14, $1087 framed includes shipping to continental US.

This easel, however, requires some sort of table. My thrifty friend Catherine uses an old TV table, but there are lighter versions now available.

I wrote recently about pochade boxes for every budget. Dollar Tree’s 9X13 baking pan has only gone up to $1.25, so you can still make the cheapest possible palette for $2.50, plus duct tape. What I neglected to mention in that post was the possibility of buying a used pochade box. Some of my best art tools were purchased second-hand. But you must have the time to be patient.

If you’re handy, you can make one like I did. Or, there’s the classic cigar-box pochade.

Best Buds, 11X14, $1087 framed, includes shipping to continental US.

One of the great advantages of watercolor is that it doesn’t require any easel. Many studio oil painters sketch in watercolor in the field. A Winsor & Newton Cotman field set and a watercolor journal are a cheap, lightweight introduction to wilderness painting. That’s essentially what Thomas Moran carried on the Hayden Expedition to Yellowstone in 1871. He’s known as an oil painter, but his watercolors have an important place in art history.

In every media, the difference between professional and student grade paints and pastels is the amount of pigment and the quality of the binders. In some cases, more expensive pigments will be copied with hues. A hue mimics the color of a single-pigment paint with less-expensive materials. For example, “cerulean blue hue” is often a combination of zinc white and phthalo blue.

A better solution is to avoid pricier pigments in the first place. In earth colors, there’s almost no difference between the student brand and the professional brand. The difference shows up in paints like the cadmiums, where the pigment itself is expensive. There are modern substitutes that do the job equally well at a lower cost.

Blueberry Barrens, 24X36, $3985 includes shipping in continental US.

There are decent student-grade brands out there in all media:

Oils: Gamblin 1980 and Winsor & Newton Winton.

Acrylics: Winsor & Newton Galeria and Liquitex.

Watercolors: Winsor & Newton Cotman or Grumbacher Academy.

Pastel: Alphacolor Soft Pastels

If you decide you love plein air painting, you can replace these student-grade colors with professional-grade paints over time.

Brushes don’t have to break the bank either. Even though I have a slew of fine watercolor brushes, I still reach for my Princeton Neptunes. Oil and acrylic are trickier since cheap brushes sometimes drop bristles in your work. Princeton also makes good, inexpensive oil/acrylic brushes, especially their 5200 and 5400 series. If you want a synthetic brush, make sure it imitates hog bristles, not sable. A softer brush isn’t meant for alla prima painting.

It’s plein air season again. Check out my workshops, here.

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An easel solution to an oversize problem

I saw a great retrofit of a Guerrilla Painter Flex Easel last year and have been meaning to try it. No time like the present!

A hacksaw and a file will achieve a lot.
The organizers at Cape Elizabeth Paint for Preservation give us 2.5 days to do one painting. In return, they want us to paint big. I like painting big, so I’m happy to oblige. The trouble is, with the exception of the Gloucester easel, most plein airsetups are meant for fairly small work. I have a Gloucester easel, but it is missing a part. I can balance a 20X24 board on my pochade box using clips, but that’s the absolute limit. And canvases need better support than do boards.
I’ve narrowed it down to three possible sizes, depending on how intrepid I feel and how the weather looks—36X36, 24X30, or 20X24. I’ve packed my big brushes and lots of extra paint. The only issue was working up a field easel that could accommodate big panels without blowing away.
My easel before I hacked at it. That’s an en plein air pro shelf on the tripod. Very useful.
Tara Will is a fantastic pastel painter from Maryland. She works large and loose in the field, using a modified Guerrilla Painter 3001 No.17 Flex Easel. This is basically an aluminum head that fits on a camera tripod. I have one, and it’s a good piece of equipment, but it is limited. It only extends to 20”. Like all Guerrilla Painter tools, though, it’s rock solid.
Hacksawing the easel apart.
Tara sawed hers in half, inserted a piece of steel strip metal in the gap and locked the whole thing down with set screws. Genius! I’ve wanted to do something similar ever since I saw it. The only issue was to find a mending plate or metal strip to fit.
I stopped at two hardware stores, a marine store and a shipyard, with no luck. I went home, discouraged. My husband suggested one more trip, to Rockport Steel, which fabricates huge things like lobster boats and dock ramps. A fellow named Tim took time off and milled me a ½”X24” flat plate while I waited. It turns out that he is a darned good artist, judging by his work hanging in the office.
The steel flat strip fit perfectly.
From there it was a simple matter of cutting the aluminum stem in half with a hacksaw. Two extra screws from a Testrite easel easily locked the flat bar down. The screws were slightly too long to clear the canvas, so I cut them down with a bolt cutter. I think Tara’s might lock from the back, but no longer remember.
 It’s a mite wobbly when fully extended, and I don’t know yet how difficult it will be to adjust the set screws on the fly. Only field testing will tell me if it will work.
I have spare screws on hand for my Testrite classroom easels. They fit perfectly in the groove and locked the steel flat strip down securely.
Solid enough for field painting? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, Bobbi Heathtexted me, “Do you want to use my Gloucester easel?” Well, I thought, I just spent half a day tinkering with this thing and I’d love to see if it actually works…


And then, on second thought, I answered, “heck, yeah!” When the pressure’s on, I’d rather use an old reliable tool than a new contraption.
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Nova Scotia is calling me

Heading to Nova Scotia to study watercolors with Poppy Balser, I found a good reference for choosing easels in my email.

Replacing a plank on the Stephen Taber, by Carol L. Douglas

I had time for a quick sketch of the Stephen Taber between returning from Northampton, MA and departing for Digby, Nova Scotia. At the shipyard, Captain John Foss suggested I look up a local specialty called a Digby Chick, which he said is a particularly potent kind of smoked herring. On the boat a Digby native told us there is no such thing. Who to believe? The Captain, of course.

We were queuing for the ferry, which crosses the Bay of Fundy to the Digby Gut and from there to the Annapolis Basin. I was driving Bobbi Heath’s new SUV, which has Massachusetts plates. That gave me carte blanche to drive very, very fast (or so I said). The open road, my paint kit, and new places along the hard, cold North Atlantic surf—this is an idyll.

The ferry dock at Digby, Nova Scotia

We’re in Digby to take a workshop from the superlative Canadian watercolorist Poppy Balser. From there, we’ll head north and around the Bay via Truro and Parrsboro. I haven’t been in this neck of the woods since my trans-Canada trip last October. It’s warmer now, and I’m rested. This area has the highest tides in the world, and I have the time and energy to paint them in each phase.

I am moderately competent at watercolor, but Poppy has a loose, lyrical style that I admire and want to understand. This is, of course, the end result of a highly accomplished technique. There are lots of things I want to learn from her, including how she paints her lively, moving water.

Angelique at the Dock, 2016, Poppy Balser. She did the sketch for this at Castine, on the day we shared a Scotch Egg on the landing. I left, and she bagged the boat. 

From the instructor side, I try to discourage buying stuff just for my class. I don’t like making people spend money. It’s been fun experiencing this from the student side, however. The impulse to have something new for the first day of school is strong.

So I invested in some beautiful, new, elegant Rosemary & Co. brushes. I justify this by telling myself that, unlike oil brushes, it’s hard to destroy watercolor brushes. Beyond that, my watercolor kit was pretty good, actually.
Everything I own for watercolor fits in a plastic laundry basket, in contrast to my oil painting supplies, which spill out of my studio into every corner of my house. At plein airevents, I envy the watercolorists their efficiency. When it comes time to frame, however, they get their comeuppance, as they have to fiddle with glass, mats and tape.
We had time to race around St. John’slovely old streets to seek out the commercial harbor. Our goal of finding a greasy takeout for the ferry, however, was foiled. “Opening maybe May 16,” the sign read.  Just like home.

As soon as Bobbi saw the commercial fleet at Digby she started wondering about property prices. It’s beautiful.

We’re carrying four easels with us. One is a predecessor of the Mabef M32, and one is a Guerrilla Painter Flex Easel mounted on a Slik tripod. These are for our watercolors, because they have heads that can be set horizontal. If space had been a problem, we could have used either of them for oils as well. It was easier to just toss our regular kits in the car. In Bobbi’s case, that is an Open Box M; in mine it’s a pochade box I made.

I was contacted by a reader of my blog, Olivier Jennes, founder of WonderStreet. He asked me to look at an article they’d just published about easels. They’re in no way connected with the brands involved; they’re just passionate about art and design.
I’ve read their review, and think it’s worth passing along. If you’re thinking about buying a new easel, you can find the link here.
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Choosing a watercolor easel

My own contraption, easily assembled from off-the-shelf parts. It functions equally well for oils and watercolors.

This weekend I got a letter from a southern California watercolor artist asking about field easels. I’ve written a lot about oil-painting easels but very little about watercolor easels. However, the same fundamental rule applies: there is no single “right” easel for every person and every situation.

En plein air pro watercolor easel.
For me, a movable mast is an important consideration for watercolor, because I want my work surface to be able to go almost flat for washes. One commercial easel with that flexibility is the Anderson Swivel Easel. The trade-off for lighter weight in aluminum field easels is that they can be flimsy compared to their wooden counterparts, but this is a good alternative to a wooden box-style easel.  At 5’6”, I find it to be slightly too short for me to work standing. But if you work from a seated position, the small storage area and slightly shorter profile will pose no great problems.

Anderson Swivel Easel
I made myself a heavy-duty variation, using a mastfrom Guerrilla Painter, a shelf from En Plein Air Pro, and a ball-head tripod I had from back in the days when we used real cameras. This is the workhorse easel in my collection—it is virtually indestructible, very stable and easy to adjust.  And there’s no assembly needed: just buy the parts and put them together. If you already have a good tripod, you can assemble this easel for less than $120.

Mabef beechwood field easel has a pivoting head. Mine has been amazingly durable and is the first easel I grab for new painting students to try.
The trouble is, it’s quite heavy. That’s no problem for painting from the back of your car, but if you let your friends talk you into long hikes, it’s just too much. For a truly lightweight easel, I’d look at En Plein Air Pro’s line. As I noted above, the trade-off for their light weight is that they are less able to endure the shocks of truly extreme plein air painting.
I also have a Mabef field easel, which is an economical answer to the pivot-head problem for watercolor artists. Its major downside is that you need to bring a table with you, but it’s my most useful teaching easel, and has outlasted a lot of fancier alternatives. While the head doesn’t pivot 360°, it can be turned flat, and that’s enough for most applications.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.


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My new field easel

Slik tripod, Guerrilla painter easel head, and En Plein Air Pro shelf.
After I posted last week about my search for a new plein air easel, I found this little number on Amazon. Oddly, while it is listed as being made by Guerrilla Painter, it isn’t on their website. Perhaps it’s a discontinued item.
My brother had actually drawn up a plan to make me a very similar item, but I know he’s relieved to be excused. It seems absurdly overpriced to me, but it’s also exactly what I needed to retrofit my existing tripod into an easel. Like all Guerrilla Painter items, it’s extremely well made. Unlike my Guerrilla Box, however, it’s very lightweight.
Or, I can turn the head 90 degrees and put my palette to the side. Not sure why I’d do that, but it’s nice to know I can.
 I have a Slik tripod that’s a little heavier than I’d wanted—about 5 pounds—but very strong and easy to set up and take down. The Plein Air Pro shelf fits it perfectly, and the easel head works very well with its quick-release head.
I like being able to move my painting to different angles, which is why my lightweight Mabef beechwood field easel with its pivoting head has been the easel I’ve returned to after each flirtation with a different (and mostly more expensive) system.
I don’t generally watercolor like this in the field, but if I wanted to… or, I could put a board in there and a tablecloth over the whole thing and serve afternoon tea. Or, I could take the easel head off and use the tripod to take photos!
This being a component system, I can easily buy a replacement carbon-fiber tripod that will weigh less than 3 lbs. and set me back—oh—not more than $450. But right now, that extra two pounds seems bearable for the price.
The bubble-level is there for leveling a camera. But I think this means I can stop carrying a separate level around in my kit.
The En Plein Air Pro shelf is really intended for watercolorists, but I’ve decided the cup-holder might come in handy for coffee. (Not that it will really show when my palette is open.)
Dismantled and dumped on my steps. Will fit easily in my backpack.
This set-up means the only wooden box I’ll be carrying is my palette. All my other tools are in plastic bags or bins—lighter in weight, easy to toss if they get gummed up, and easily replaced at the hardware store.
It does need to be field-tested, and I’ll be doing that tomorrow. I’m especially interested in how the tripod and my umbrella get along.
And if you haven’t signed up for my Rochester classes or Maine workshops, what on earth are you waiting for? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
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In search of the perfect easel

I can handle the Sun-Eden storage because it’s plastic and light. I hate carrying around wooden storage space just because someone else thinks it’s necessary.

Of course, there IS no perfect easel, but I do have a perfect palette, and I want an easel deserving of it

My current easel took its last gasp at ABVI’s “Play It Forward” on Saturday. It’s ironic that, after years of being hoisted over rocks, up hillsides, through snow and withering heat, it would succumb during an air-conditioned cocktail party. (Perhaps it was shock.)
My palette on the Sun-Eden.
I have painted with a French easel (which proved to be too heavy and awkward), a Gloucester easel (which is far too big and inflexible),a Guerrilla box (which is just too heavy to carry long distances but is solid as a rock in high winds), simple tripod easels of both wood and aluminum  (which have no shelves so necessitate bringing a table), and a beechwood folding tripod easel with adjustable head. The last has always been my favorite, except it’s relatively delicate and has finally succumbed to overuse.
My palette on the Featherlight Pro.
The best possible place to explore easel options is when you’re with a bunch of other serious artists, and NYPAP’s Statewide Paintout at Olana provided a great opportunity to look at two easels—the Sun-Eden Traveling Easel and Featherlight Pro Easel. (And thanks again to Jamie Grossman and Bea Gustafson for giving me the highlights of their easels.)
Corinne Avery’s shelf solution. Very useful for watercolor, which is light. Not so good for oils.
I also came across thisand wonder if I ought to just buy it and the Plein Air Pro shelf to attach to my Slik camera tripod, which is a high-quality, underutilized piece of equipment.
In order of importance, what matters to me is:
  • Light weight (I want to be able to backpack my kit short distances when necessary);
  • Durability;
  • A stable shelf on which I can secure my palette;
  • An adjustable head that is separate from the body;
  • NO extra weight in built-in storage (that’s what Tupperware is for);
  • A hook from which I can hang my backpack to stabilize the thing;
  • Reasonable price.

 So I’m curious: what easel do you like and why?
August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.