Custom, rotating easel.
 

Here is my new easel. I designed and built it myself.
It is funky looking but it does what I need.
My needs were the following:

1- Raise and lower the work quickly.
2- Rotate the work to any angle.
3- Adjust tilt toward and away from me.
4- A solid easel that DOES NOT move when I don't want it to move.

Here's a view from behind...

Interesting...
 

Very interesting, I can't quite make out from your photos how the canvas is clamped in. Do you have more images?

FINISHED!
 

I finished building my easel yesterday. Now it can fit canvases 60" wide by any height. It is counter weighed so the canvas can be raised and lowered easily. The canvas can be rotated to any angle.

Here's a view from the back. It dices, it slices...

The smaller circle with the indentations does not rotate. It is attached to a block of wood which is connected to the weights by a steel cable and runs vertically inside the aluminum channel.

The outer, big round plate is the rotating element. It holds the canvas and it is connected to the smaller circle through their center by a wooden rod. Ball bearing wheels are attached to the two circles and hold that rod in their inner diameter. The indentations allow me to lock the angle. I also screwed a piece of rubber (that black rectangular shape you see in the back view), which adds friction and helps to sustain the angle.

Those were the things I came up with. Everything else I copied from standard easels I saw in stores.

Now that looks very neat! How do you adjust it up and down and rotating? Do you just push it with your hand or is it more complicated?

All I do is push up or down or around. The moving elements are tied to the weights and there is just enough friction in the system so I don't need to keep adding or removing weights according to the size of the canvas. It stays where I leave it.

Like to build me one? :) I am actually looking for a new easel and one like that looks great! Maybe you should go into business.

Painting is my business. It is going to be, that is, as soon as I sell the first one. As for building you one like this...sure, $10k, 6 months.

Well seriously, it is a nice looking easel and I hope it gives you years of great service. :)

Thank you, Michael. I am really happy to have seen this project through. There is nothing like the challenge of executing an ambitious plan. The big challenge lies ahead, however. The tools at our disposal are only as meaningful as the work we do while using them.

Dear Deladier,

This is a very impressive, Da Vinci-esque easel. Wouldn't it be nice to tie a vituperative backbiting critic onto it, spread-eagled, and give it a good spin!

Under what circumstances will you rotate the canvas? I'm assuming that you like to turn your photos upside down. Or do you paint the edges of your canvas?

My fear is that critical shards would be heaved radially and some of them would remain lodged in hidden crevices throughout my garage, and they would never stop whispering inane little complaints and criticisms, rendering the room useless for the purpose of painting.

I only rotate the canvas when doing so will facilitate stroking the outer edge of a curved passage. The need to do that in figurative painting is somewhat limited but every once in a while it comes in sooo handy. I rotate my canvas a lot more when I do these: http://www.thefineportrait.com/fred.html