Making an artist's wall easel

When I saw Andrew Tischler's You Tube video of how he created a wall easel, I thought 'that's cool' but didn't really see a need for it - after all, I had my traditional free-standing wooden easel that served all my needs. It wasn't until I started using a smaller room in the house as my studio that I realised that I could benefit from at least one aspect of a wall easel - space saving.

I watched the video again, to make sure I was on the right track. Mine wasn't going to be anywhere near as big as his but it would be big enough and I'd make it work well in my space.

I set about measuring the space available and drawing up rudimentary plans.

Great ideas!

I'd seen the artist Vladimir Volegov make his own free-standing easel and you can buy easel plans to build your own but I still thought that a wall easel was my best bet, especially as I had my long glass palette which would be positioned just underneath the easel. I came up with a couple of ideas for wall easels that weren't stationary - they could slide up and down vertically, to give you the adjustable height, rather than rely on several fixed-height wooden straps.

My idea was based on the easel used by the American artist Chuck Close who had an easel which could be raised or lowered through an opening in the floor of his studio; necessary because he did very large paintings and was wheelchair-bound.

The options I came up with were using a pair of drawer slides on either side of a single wide panel - this would enable the panel to slide up and down vertically and the canvas could be hung on the panel. My favourite option, however, was to use a pair of linear rail guides for a CNC machine.

It would be really cool to have a single solid panel affixed to these rails and it could be raised and lowered using a sleek counterweight pulley system. It wouldn't have been all that expensive but I decided against it because I thought if I didn't manage to make them completely parallel, then the panel would have problems sliding up and down. Maybe I'll take the plunge the next time.

From my original measurements, I thought I'd make it 1700mm wide and I decided to set the horizontal strips 100mm apart - that would provide enough space to position the 'canvas hangers' which I'd be making, and give enough variation in height positions.

I searched B & Q's website for white pine planned timber and found it easily enough - £10.50 per 2.4 meter strip of 44mm x 18mm. Quite by chance I stumbled upon Wickes website and they were doing similar timber for £4.50 per 2.4 meter strip - result! Less than half the price!

Since the timber strips were 2.4 meter lengths, I adjusted the width of the wall easel to 1600mm - this meant the offcuts would be 800mm and two of them could be used as another strip (with a join over the middle strut) - no point in wasting wood.

I fastened three struts to the wall ensuring they were vertical using a spirit level. Then I attached the horizontal strips, starting from the top and working my way down, leaving a 100mm gap between them. I checked the level on each strip - its amazing how much it can go off if you just rely on measuring the gap with a tape measure.

I had calculated a gap of 100mm was required because of the 'hangers' I'd be making to be able to hang a canvas on the easel.

The Tischler wall easel uses a 45 degree triangular wooden trim along the entire length of each horizontal strip - I couldn't find any of this at all and so came up with an idea for the hangers using some of the wood and some aluminium angle. I reckon the triangular trim could cost as much as the planned timber which would have almost doubled the overall cost.

Ninety-two screws (using a normal screwdriver) and two blisters later, the wall easel was up. I gave it two coats of the same pale grey paint which I had used on the walls.

These are the 'canvas hangers' which I've made from 20cm offcuts of the wooden strips. I drilled elongated holes into the aluminium angle so that I'd have some lateral adjustment and make the fit over the straps of the wall easel nice and snug, so that the canvases don't move.

One of these is screwed to the back of the top wooden stretcher bar of a canvas and the canvas can then hang anywhere on the wall easel (except directly over the three vertical struts). If you have a really big canvas, say over a metre wide, then you can use two of these.

I've tried it out and it works great!

I've put away my free-standing easel and now have a bit more space in my studio. And I've already got other ideas for the wall easel as I get it prepared for business. I'm going to mount an electrical 4-gang socket over one of the side vertical struts, so that I can plug stuff in.

Happy painting!

Update:

Having lived with the wall easel for a year now, it works great, however as I contemplate some of the things I might want to do in the future, it's obvious it has some limitations. There's no way with this setup that you can paint from life as you cannot really accommodate a live sitter. It would be possible to paint a still-life composition, provided it was arranged on either side of my painting bench.