The Easel

Many of you know from reading our Gesso 101 posts that Gesso has been around a very long time. The origins of the Easel are much older. The concept of the Easel really is old as man. Necessity being the mother of invention; the first Easel was most likely devised when cavemen leaned pieces of bark against a tree to better view the scratchings they’d made on it with a sharp stone.

Throughout the modern world Easels are in use for so many purposes. There are probably more Easels in use for the creation and presentation of two-dimensional visual arts than any other use. Many of you would also be familiar with Easels used in many ways that go primarily unnoticed, such as fancy brass Easels that may hold a restaurant’s daily special board or the announcement of a reserved space for an event gathering.

We’ll spare you the long standing (pun intended) history of the Easel which has gone from relative obscurity to modern day tool of artists and many industries so that we can get right to information regarding The Easel’s art world applications.

There are a few different types of art easels. Very ornate carved wood or brass easels are often used to hold framed or unframed paintings, photos, drawings or any two-dimensional visual art for display purposes. This is not the most common way to display art for gallery showings and today is used more for display of a prominent individual piece or the prize of a collection at a gallery, museum, or at home.

The two most common easel styles are Tripod and H-Frame designs. Tripod easel designs are based on three legs with variations that include crossbars to make the easel more stable and an independent mechanism to allow for vertical adjustment of the working plane without sacrificing the stability that the three legs of the easel provide.

H-Frame style Easels are based on right angles and provide the most stable base on which to create. The posts are generally parallel to each other with the base of the easel being rectangular. The main portion of the easel consists of two vertical posts with a horizontal crossbar support, thus giving the design the general shape of an “H.”

It’s important to have the right easel. A good easel choice will take into account the type of painting you will be doing, the environment where you’ll be working and of course the scale or size that you’ll be working with.

There are several art production easels most artists are use; tabletop, paintbox, French, sketch, studio, and Taboret.

Tabletop Easels are among the least expensive. They are small so they don’t take up much space; they’re also convenient to store and carry since they’re foldable. Due to the table-top easel’s generally small average size, they aren’t suitable to use with large canvases. Available in both light metal and wood varieties these easels can be ideal for doing close work while seated.

Paint-box Easels make a great portable prop for beginners. In addition to holding your canvas, these easels are also comprised using a container box. The box is to be used for carrying/storing supplies. Great for outdoor painting due to they’re compact portability; the problem with paintbox easels is that they aren’t very stable so a steady platform is advisable.

The French Easel is very versatile. They’re comprised of a canvas carrier, adjustable extending leg tripod easel, and supply box in one package. French Easels are foldable so like the Paintbox and Tabletop Easels they are easy to transport. Many come with straps and/or a briefcase handle to further facilitate mobility. These easels can generally be adjusted for Tabletop use. Ideal for either standing or seated work, French Easels usually incorporate the means to adjust the working angle.

Sketch Easels are incredibly lightweight. They are commonly referred to as display easels because they can be used to display light works of art such as charcoal sketches or the like. However, since these painting easels are so lightweight, they usually don’t offer much stability. The may be ideal for light indoor impromptu work.

Studio Easels are almost always H-Frame Easels though very heavy studio tripods do exist. These easels can be incredibly large and are designed to stand on the floor. Considered the most stable of painting easels, studio easels are quite suitable to use when you need to work with large and deep-edge canvases. As with any standing easel they afford the artist the ability to ’step back’ to view work in progress on the same plane as the completed work will be displayed.

One of the drawbacks of studio easels is that they aren’t portable because they’re so heavy this drawback has the positive effect of allowing for quite vigorous painting. The Artist Studio Easel is as you might have guessed among the most expensive of art easels.

The Taboret Easel is called an easel but is only an easel in the loosest sense of the term in that you may use it (as any countertop) as an art platform. More of a cabinet providing ample storage to keep any work area organized Taboret are available in a wide array of styles and materials.

A Taboret does make an excellent addition to any artist’s studio area accommodating a wide variety of supplies; many Taborets can easily be used to hold a Tabletop Easel and can help make it a breeze to finish deep-edge canvas work. Some of the more robust designs sport several drawers and cabinets endowed with smaller organizational nooks, separations and cubbyholes; a Taboret may be equated to an artist’s ‘roll-top’ desk (sans Roll-top of course).

Well there you have it; a rundown of the easels most appropriate for artistic endeavors. Without any further ado or loud rebellion you should now be ready, armed with the links and info in this post, to take a stand for your art by acquiring an easel.

Tags: artist easel, French easel, h-frame easel, paint-box easel, sketch easel, studio easel, tabletop easel, taboret, tripod easel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Educational, Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.