Portable Collapsible Easel

This easel is both beautiful to look at and incredibly useful as well. I was wanting to paint a large format piece - 4 foot high, and this easel can handle substantially larger canvases. It is easy to lay the canvas flat or invert it. It is sturdy and it was easy to assemble for me as well. One small part got damaged in shipment to me. The company was incredibly responsive and sent me a replacement part straight from the factory. Joyce, their customer service person was busy emailing back and forth on July 4th. I would say A+ for customer service, in fact I liked the product so well, I have purchased another for my vacation home.

Sturdy nice, good quality wood. I like that it can be tilted horizontal. Can be moved around. Collapsed and doesn't take much space. Assembly? each piece was numbered and they put each kind if hardware piece labeled in big letters in a separate easy to open bag. I ran into a glitch with the hinge screws holes on one side were marked wrong, but it was an easy fix (nail and hammer and used my electric screw to get the screws in). Step 5 of the assembly the diagram was confusing. The bulk piece should be on a flat surface while you try to thread the long screws through the pieces of wood.Overall, a nice easel, luxury for a fraction of the cost.

The easel is made of very sturdy wood, and had wheels for convenient portability.When I first opened the package I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of assembly required, but with help from the user's manual I was able to get it put together and ready for a painting session!Things I like:This thing is huge. I am able to paint on any of my canvas sizes from from my massive 36x48s down to a tiny 5x7.I like that it has the option to hold multiple canvases. It is very convenient to be able to work on a painting and while I wait for a layer to dry, to put it on the second shelf while I make some progress on a second painting.The wheels are very helpful for moving the easel around my house, even if it is just from building it to placing it in a permanent location.Something I didn't like:During assembly I had a somewhat difficult time identifying the different pieces because they did not have number stickers on them. Often when assembling things like this I find it helpful to have a diagram in the user's manual with numbers identifying the pieces, but the pictures did make it possible to follow along well enough! This is a minor detail that didn't effect my overall experience with this easel so far.I definitely recommend this product if you are looking for a large and sturdy easel to live in your studio or roll around to different places in your house!

UPDATE, final: After contacting the seller, they addressed my issues and mailed a replacement beam that arrived extraordinarily quickly. This one seems sturdy and I am cautiously upgrading my rating to 4-stars for now. The new beam is working well, and doesn't appear to be cracking. Time will tell. This easel still has issues I don't care for, but for the price and with this customer service... if you know what you're getting, then feel free to buy away. If not this easel, then another by the same seller should serve just as well.UPDATE, Third Use: Today, while tightening up the height beam, the same beam cracked! Images included. This thing is fragile. You can't use something for painting if it breaks under normal usage on the THIRD TIME OUT. Don’t get this or any of the easels that are mass produced for multiple distributors like this one. AVOID.ORIGINAL: If you haven't noticed, every easel in this price point and style... are all exactly the same. Whoever makes these must sell to multiple distributors.This easel has three issues: One, it is beech. Beech is a cheap, nonrenewable (they take forever to grow, but there are still a lot of them so they’re cheap for now) wood that is easily damaged. Put it this way: Pine, a softwood, is more durable.Still, we don't expect to be roughhousing with an easel, but expect easy scratches and dents.Second, if used like a traditional easel where it is upright and you never plan on using this one flat for "drip" paintings... you may wish to avoid as it's VERY difficult to get it to stay still... unless you buy a couple clamps to keep the moving frame to the stationary one. This works very well, but it's annoying. You could just bolt them together if you feel like drilling. I might do that.Last, the hinges. By the gods, the hinges. These things are loose as heck and could be so much better. Fortunately, you don't have to buy new ones!Here's the fix!Take a pair of long groove pliers and crimp the metal wrapped around the pin tightly. It's almost impossible to overdo this, so put your back into it. This will take out nearly all the play in the hinges. Put them back on and the easel becomes MUCH more study front and back.Combine this fix with the clamps, keep the wheels off, and it's a fairly study easel for the price.Some closing complaints are that the aforementioned wheels are good for moving the easel, but not while painting/drawing and not in storage. Remove them. The "two at once" thing is nice enough for keeping a second painting while the first one dries or for display, but don't expect to paint since there's no way to lock it expect friction fitting it with the slide below or above it. In the end, this is just one extra slider, so don't purchase for that alone. There's also no place for art supplies on this easel, and that's rather lame. The instructions lack a notice about which way some things go together. Be prepared to have to undo part of the build and think your way through logically how to build the base.Would I purchase again? No. This is the easel you get, use for a while, and then it becomes your backup/display easel that you never paint on again. It's not bad for the price, but be prepared to fix it up a little to get it in decent shape. I'm still keeping it, but next time I'll find something else.

I like the fact that you can set two paintings.It can be set horizontally and the height of each separate painting can be regulated.Great value for money/quality of product.Can be stored easily.Easy to use, very stable, and very sturdy.