To build a "lifetime easel": Part 1

Lately, I've been sketching out ideas for future paintings in my sketchbook that will be fairly large pieces. In the past, I've simply leaned large canvases against a wall to work.  I also have an old steel easel that works up to a point, but it is cumbersome, hard to move (no wheels), and the top and bottom clamps to hold onto a canvas are almost worn out. I simply need a new easel, and I mean a good one, too.

At the same time, I've been looking into the process of painting with encaustics. The kind of painting I want to do with encaustics will necessarily mean that the painting surface be rigid, made of some type of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) or Masonite hardboard. The surfaces will have to be reinforced with a wood frame so they don't bend (encaustics can crack). These painting surfaces I will need will, of course, be fairly heavy. I need an easel that will be able to support these and and make it easy for me to lower or raise the painting to work comfortably over the entire area. To do this, a counterweight system will be used.

I looked at all types of easels on the internet. I looked at all the easels at Hobby Lobby and Michaels. If I were to purchase the kind of easel I want I'd be shelling out over $500.00 (like the Best Santa Fe easel I saw on Jerry's Artarama). Even this easel doesn't quite look like what I need but the prices just go up and up. I have some woodworking skills, so I have decided to build one. I think I will use some red oak that has been seasoning up in my barn loft for several years. And finally, I'm happy to say, I've found a plan for the easel I want to build! I found it through a wonderful website I discovered called Vitruvian Studio and if you follow the link ( a fascinating read), you will see exactly what influenced me to go withe the Cadmium Easel designed by Bob Perrish, an accomplished artist in his own right. So, just like David Jamieson, of Vitruvian Studio, I sent Bob $35 for my plans.

After the plans were mailed to me, I went over them several times. They are fairly straight-forward, but there were a few things that confused me. I have to doodle and sketch stuff out a lot before I begin to really understand how to proceed. That's just how I'm wired. Guess what, though? I'm a veteran CAD instructor! So, with Bob's plans in hand, I fired up the CAD workstation and opened up a wonderful application called Autodesk Inventor to start building a virtual model of the Cadmium easel.

I'm deep into it now, and I'm discovering a few things I'll do a little bit different on my easel build. I'll keep you posted how it's going in my next blog entry. Cheers, everyone!