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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Anderson Swivel Easel |
I made myself
a
heavy-duty variation, using a
mast
from 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.
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| 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.
