Most easel advice is written for people painting freehand at arm's length, standing back to judge a composition. That is not what you are doing with a numbered canvas. You are working close in, with a loaded brush, reading small printed digits. It is much nearer to detailed drawing than to landscape painting, and the easel that suits it is not the one that looks like an artist's easel.
So before anything else, the uncomfortable point.
You may not need one
A 12x16 or 16x20 canvas sits perfectly well on a table, and a table has real advantages. You can put a lamp directly over the work, you have room for pots and a water jar within reach, and you can rest your wrist on the surface, which steadies fine work more than any equipment can.
An easel becomes worth having for three reasons, none of which is that it looks the part.
- Your neck and back. Hours bent over a flat table is the most common complaint from people who paint one of these. Tilting the work toward you fixes it.
- Seeing the whole picture. On a table you look at the canvas at an angle, foreshortened. Tilted up you see it as it will actually hang, which matters when you are judging whether an area is working.
- Space. If you cannot leave a table set up between sessions, an easel that folds away is the difference between painting and not painting.
The types, and which ones suit this
Tabletop drafting or H-frame easel — the best fit
A small frame that sits on a table and adjusts through a range of angles, usually with a ledge at the bottom for the canvas to rest on. This is the type that suits numbered painting best, for one reason: it will hold a shallow angle. Most other designs want to stand the canvas near-upright.
Tabletop A-frame
The simplest and cheapest thing on the market: a folding tripod that props a canvas up. Fine for a small canvas, useful afterwards as a display stand. The limitation is that the angle is fixed or nearly so, and it is usually steeper than you want.
Sketch box or French easel
An easel and a storage box in one, with drawers for paints and brushes, folding into a case with a handle. Genuinely useful if you have nowhere to leave things out, since the whole project packs away together. They are heavier and dearer than a plain frame, and you are paying mostly for the storage.
Floor tripod and studio H-frame
Full-height standing easels. Both are designed around large canvases and a standing painter, which is the opposite of this hobby. A studio H-frame is a substantial piece of furniture and overkill for a 16x20. Where a floor easel does earn its place is afterwards, as a way of displaying the finished canvas.
What actually matters when choosing
Angle range, not canvas capacity
Almost every easel sold will hold a 16x20, so capacity is rarely the deciding factor. What varies enormously is how shallow an angle the thing will hold, and that is what you should be checking.
Stability
Put a hand on it in the shop, or read what people say about wobble. An easel that shifts when you press a brush against it will spoil edges, and no other feature compensates. Rubber feet, a wide base and a positive locking mechanism are worth more than storage compartments.
A ledge deep enough to hold the canvas
A shallow lip that a framed canvas can tip off is a real problem, and a strip of low-tack tape at the base is a poor substitute for a proper ledge.
Set it much shallower than you think
This is the single most useful thing on this page. Set the canvas between roughly fifteen and thirty degrees off horizontal, not near vertical.
Three reasons. Acrylic thinned even slightly will creep downward on a steep surface, and it will do it slowly enough that you do not notice until it has crossed a border. You can rest the heel of your hand on a shallow canvas and not on a steep one. And you can read printed numbers straight on rather than at a raking angle, which matters more than anything once you get into the fine areas.
Steep easels exist because oil painters stand back from them. You are eighteen inches away.
The version that costs nothing
If you only want the angle, you do not need to buy anything. Lay the canvas on a board or a large hardback book and put a second book under the far edge. That gives you a shallow, stable tilt, it cannot wobble, and you can change it in a second.
A good many people who buy an easel end up doing exactly this and using the easel to display the finished painting.
What comes with a Ledgebay kit
Our framed kits include a wooden easel. The unframed canvases do not, so if the easel is part of why you are choosing a size, that is worth knowing before you order rather than after.
If you want to think this through against how you actually paint rather than by easel type, our guide to choosing the best easel for painting works through it by space, posture and budget. And the case for and against an easel covers the question of whether to bother at all.
And what actually works for a numbered canvas is narrower still, usually the wooden tabletop easel already in the box.
Whatever you paint on, the working habits matter more than the furniture. Our nine paint by numbers tips covers those, and the full range of designs is here when you are ready for the next one.
