Best Easel for Artists

Have you ever gone shopping for easels and found the options of fall-apart folding easels vs. expensive hardwood calliopes, and thought “what the heck do artists buy?”

The answer might surprise you. 

Many painters don’t use easels at all. For my biggest paintings, two 4x4x16” pieces of wood service nicely. They lift a painting off the floor to lean against the wall. If desired, drop cloths can be used to protect the floor from wet paint, or if it’s an unswept studio, to protect the wet paint from the floor.

For unstretched canvas: thumbtacks, pushpins, or staples are often used directly in the wall. This gives a nice solid surface, and keeps the canvas from bouncing every time you make a brush stroke, or sagging out as it’s worked.

For wood panels or smaller stretched canvases, many artists use a system of screws. Placed side-by-side and level, the hard edge of the screw heads grip the soft wood of the cradle to hold it in place without slipping. This gives a secure and solid surface, potentially allows the artist to work on more than one painting at a time, and allows the artist to view the works in a similar format to when they’ll be on the gallery wall.

If you’re fortunate to have north windows on the side wall, an added benefit is the diffusion of light coming in from the side. From this angle, there is minimal glare on the paintings.

So there you have it. For some artists, the best easel is no easel at all. Unlike expensive, rickety, splay-footed easels, all of these systems save studio space, which can be even more valuable than money.

Do you like your studio system? Send us a note, with pictures. We’d love to see!

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Interested learning with Fran O’Neill and Jonathan Harkham? Check out their online classes, and sign up today! Class sizes are small and they’re likely to fill soon. Classes start September 23rd.

Jonathan Harkham / Still Life begins 9/23

Fran O’Neill / Abstracts begins 9/23

Fran O’Neill / To Transcribe begins 10/24