Tripod Easel
How to Convert a Camera Tripod into a Painting Easel.
Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
Plato, The Republic
Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC – 347 BC)
I got a set of Holbein water soluble oil paints for Christmas and after looking around the house for a bit, I realized that I didn’t have good tilt-able easel. I did have several good camera tripods. What I really needed was a device that held a canvas and screwed on a tripod. So, I searched through art supply catalogs and the Internet, but I couldn’t find anything for sale. There are paint boxes that screw on a tripod and hold a canvas, but I didn’t need a paint box. I already had a good one.
After several weeks of thinking about it and going through at least 3 different designs, I decided to build one last weekend. I had everything I needed – wood, screws, power tools and an idea. I picked the easiest one to build. It uses two 1/2 inch dowels as rails and has 3 cross pieces that slide up and down. The center one screws onto the tripod and the outer two adjust for different sized canvases.
It felt good to be working with my hands again cutting and sanding wood, drilling holes, grinding and bending metal and problem solving. When you build something from scratch, you run into all kinds unforeseen issues. For instance my original idea was to countersink a 1/4 inch nut into the center piece of wood as a tripod mount. This didn’t work. It wasn’t strong enough. The nut pulled out of the wood when I tightened it on to the tripod. Also the thin center piece didn’t provide enough surface area to create a stable connection. What I really needed was a 3 1/2 inch square block with a metal mount in the center. I didn’t have the right tools to make an inside 1/4 inch threaded mount. All lightweight tripods use a 1/4 inch bolt with 20 threads to the inch. I found I had a left over thin, galvanized metal plate with small holes drilled in a grid pattern. I wondered if I drilled a hole in the center of it that was 1/64th of an inch less than a 1/4 inch if it would screw on a standard tripod bolt. I tried it and sure enough it worked perfectly. I used a vise and a rubber mallet to bend the plate around the edges of the wood block and I used screws through the bent edges to hold it on the block.
It’s a good design. It’s strong and stable, lightweight, adjustable, and holds canvases up to 12×16 inches. You can substitute longer 1/2 inch dowels if you want to hold bigger canvases. You can move wet oil paintings by leaving the holder on the canvas and taking it off the tripod. This is even easier if you use a quick release. I might make several holders so I can work on multiple paintings in various stages.
A tripod head makes it easy to tilt a canvas from flat horizontal to straight vertical. You can tilt the surface into a vertical position to use a projector to trace out a composition. You can use the horizontal position to work on watercolors or to apply fine detail to an oil painting.
I’m pleased with the way it turned out. It’s a very handy device. Maybe I should sell the idea.
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