Easels?

[Vicki Murray]

1. Do you use easels?  Why and for what medium?  Charcoals? Watercolor? Sketching?  Thanks for your thoughts.

[Sandra Strait]

I don’t use them very often.  Occasionally, when I’m doing watercolor where I want the paint to drip or for sketching if I’m going to set up in one place outside.

[Vicki Murray]

Thanks Sandra

[Debra “Kate” Powell]

Only when I am doing a large piece — and then it is not watercolor but oil or acrylic.  I have two, and I only bought the small one to save money and it was silly as I ended up needing the larger, so for a couple hundred (unless you buy used) more get the one you want.

My setup when working comission, bug:

[Mark Anderson]

Except for when I’m teaching, I don’t use my large Santa Fe II studio easel very often anymore. I used to – back when I still did a lot of large canvas work, but that no longer interests me.

So that leaves the smaller stuff. Yes, for plein air work, I will use a French easel or (more likely) a sketching platform on a tripod, (something I built myself) which allows me to work flat. That, of course, is the best way to work in watercolor. I also use it for working in gouache.

Finally for urban sketching, which is the primary focus of my current body of work, I have been trying out the Etchr Slate Mini, which is a little bit like a satchel/pochade box/body-stabilized drawing platform. The jury is still out for me on this – I’ve had some very positive experiences with it, but is it really an improvement over simply working in a sketchbook or on a watercolor block? Time will tell.

Of course, I do like to just sit and work at my drawing board from time to time as well. But you asked specifically about easels, so there you have it.

 

[Gerri Dudzinski]

I use easel for oil painting and avoid using it for watercolor because watercolor starts dripping off the easel and ruins my paintings.

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