Kraftgeek Inspire Portable Easel. 
Set yourself up easely (sorry).

For portability, robustness and smooth design,
Kraftgeek Inspire Portable Easel has clever, functional design that just works.

As a painter, I’ve made jokes in the past about painting being a contact sport.  And as such, have needed all my gear to be pretty robust.  Especially my easels.  I had some misgivings when I first assembled the Kraftgeek Inspire portable easel (which was quite easy by the way, all the legs extended and locked in place well).  I initially suspected that the legs may retract into themselves under the weight of my painting process.  Added to that I had canvas taped on to a particularly heavy piece of ply!  But the easel didn’t show any signs of slipping or collapsing, and held up well to my abuse.

Up until recently I have been using a very old clunky timber fold up easel on my travels, which was hefty, difficult to set up, and quite often didn’t stay how and where I put it.  It also weighs about 3.6kg and is pretty cumbersome at about 1m long and 15cm wide and deep.  So, not small.  The Inspire Easel however, folds down beautifully to just under 2kg, and has a much smaller footprint at 50cm long and roughly 10cm deep/5cm wide.  So it fits in the suitcase, no problems at all (something I’ve had a problem with before in Australia, with Jetstar wanting to charge me for extra baggage at $80!).

As far as travel and setup, the Kraftgeek Inspire Easel is far superior to any portable easels I’ve used in the past.

It took me a little while to realise how to use the twisting/unlocking mechanism on the legs properly - both setting it up and dropping it back down.  This is mostly because I don’t like following instructions and thought I could work it out easily.  Hahaha.  Just a couple of goes at it and we have it on lock now.

I haven’t used the Kraftgeek Inspire easel for plein air painting yet, but I can see it being very useful for that, although with any easel and wind, there may be some issues!  A detachable shelf may be useful as an inclusion and would stop the easel going anywhere in high wind.  There is a built in bag hook at the back of the stand which would also stop the easel from moving around in a windy situation.

In the workshop setting that I was trialling the Inspire easel in, I was pleasantly surprised by how much pressure I could put on the canvas with only a little bit of “bounce”.  For such a lightweight easel I was expecting a lot more movement.  The legs were robust and didn’t splay out or collapse, and were held in place really well by the inbuilt support structures. 

My only complaint is that it’s just slightly on the short side for me, I’m 6” tall.  Ish.  It would be more comfortable for me if it had another set of flip down canvas brackets about 15cm higher than the current ones, although that would then impact the size of the canvas you could use. 

My only other observation is that I often move the canvas around as I’m working, and it is quite a process to get it out of the vice-like grip that holds it in place at the top.

As far as a travel easel goes, I would highly recommend the Kraftgeek Inspire Easel.  Or, if you do a lot of plein air painting, I can see this being a really useful piece of kit.  It’s a sleek, lightweight and robust design catering for the majority of projects and the majority of painters.  Let’s see how long it takes me to break it!

If you’d like your very own Kraftgeek Inspire Easel, you can order one through this link and get 15% off :)  We are an affiliate of Kraftgeek, and may receive a commission if you make a purchase through a link on this page.  Which we would very much appreciate :D

Top of Kraftgeek Inspire Easel

Back To Painting Tools

Back to Explore Acrylic Painting Home Page