Right, now for what actually happened.
I had this French easel for years and years and never really played with it. This summer, I decided I ought to get back into acrylic painting, something I abandoned years ago for whatever reason. Before I did that, I wanted to spruce my old easel up, hopefully making it easier and safer to use. So I unscrewed everything, removed all the metal pieces, and took the easel apart. Then I sanded and applied several coats of polyurethane stain to each wooden piece. I set the whole thing outside to dry overnight.
I came back in the morning to put the poor thing back together.
Here's how the easel looked when I was finished.
This is the best reason to use this kind of easel: The whole thing folds up into a convenient box shape. At least it's supposed to. I had a hard time folding my easel back up and let me show you why:
Um... hrm...
Helpful Hint: If you ever feel the need to take a complicated thing like this apart for whatever reason, TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOGRAPHS BEFORE YOU BREAK OUT THE SCREWDRIVERS! I didn't but I have the excellent excuse of not having a camera handy. So I brought everything indoors, looked up catalog pictures of French easels, and after an hour of squinting at low-res photos on my laptop, here's my easel, all folded up...
And here she is in alt-mode. Glad to have you back, easel. You and I got a date with a Bob Ross DVD!
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Sketch of the day!
Or rather, another Watercolor of the Week! Here's a very-sensitive-if-I-do-say-so-myself study of the view from part of Long Lake:
