What easel to choose - pros and cons of different easels

I have 3 different easels. If you are a beginner, it's hard to understand what type of an easel to choose, will it be comfortable and whether or not you need to buy an expensive one.

Do you need to buy an easel?

If you don't have a financial ability to buy an easel - don't be upset, it's not an essential thing. However, easel is really handy. You can step back from it any time and observe your artwork from a distance, as a whole. When you concentrate too much on a detail, you can over-render it, make it bigger and unproportional. In the end, easel is a perfect place to storage your artwork.

The autumn is here, so it's time to think about the Christmas presents. As far as I know, easel is a good one!

Aluminum Tripod Easel

The simplest variant. The first easel I bought.

Pros

- inexpensive
- light (around 2-3 kg)
- the most compact, it's very easy to fold it and storage
- you can vary it's height by adjusting the telescoping legs
- strong, resists scratches

Cons

- unstable, not suitable for strong keystrokes
- not suitable for big canvases, the girder bends back easily
- on metal the paint stays wet forever and you need to clean it every session or else you're going to get oil stains everywhere it comes near to (mentioned by foliver)

The mount is pretty strange, but convenient. The only problem with it is that if you are using a thin canvas it's going to be hard to paint at the bottom and top, because it covers this parts.


This easel has a lot of disadvantages, I don't recommend to buy it.

Jullian Easel

I completely forgot to mention it, so thank to all of my DeviantArt friends for reminding me about it.
There is a photo of the cheapest variant.

Pros

- light (around 5 kg)
- folds up to a suitcase, easy to carry and storage
- stable
- has a place to store paints and brushes
- perfect for plein air

Cons

- a good variation can be pricy
- the easel on photo is not very comfortable - you need to stretch the hand to the canvas, because the paint drawer takes a lot of space
- not suitable for big canvases

Not the cheapest easel from the list, but definitely the best variant for a hobbyist or beginner.

Lyre Easel

The traditional variant.

Pros

- inexpensive
- pretty stable
- light (around 4-5 kg)
- compact, easy to fold it and storage
- (more expensive variants have a shelf for brushes and movable girder)

Cons

- gets dirty fast (which is absolutely normal, especially if you have a habit to wipe the brushes over it)
- not suitable for big canvases, back leg moves easily

The mount is straight with a small protruding edge. Simple and almost perfect - I've got no complaints.

I have the cheapest variant of the lyre easel, it has no mobile girder, which means that if you want to raise or lower the artwork, you will have to untwist 2 fasteners (upper and bottom) and adjust them. It can be pretty annoying. More expensive easels of this type give you an ability to untwist only the bottom fastener.
The most annoying thing about this easel is that if you are painting on a medium/big canvases, the third (back) leg pulls back. Most of the artists prefer to paint on a straight standing canvases, not angled back. At first, the easel stays right, but at the middle of the session the leg moves back. 

Studio Easel

The most professional looking variant.

Pros

- super stable
- compact, easy to fold it and storage
- brush shelf
- perfect for all sizes of canvases

Cons

- expensive
- heavy (mine is 10 kg, pretty light for this type of an easel)
- gets dirty
- takes a lot of space

The mount is similar to the one that Lyre Easel has. At first, those little notches on the mount looked very handy to insert thin canvases in them, but it turned out that canvas springs unpleasantly and sometimes pulls back. Perhaps, I need more practice to reveal all the advantages of this design.


I didn't expect that, but one of the most important feature of an easel for me is stability. The reason is that my lovely dog often pushes the easel (with the help of his big hairy butt), and several times I was catching the falling Lyra Easel. So the Studio Easel became a perfect choice for me.

Eventually, the choice depends on how much space you have and how much money you don't mind to spend, because even the cheapest easel does his work well.

I hope this review will help you choose the right easel.