No Easel? No Problem!

It's not necessary to buy an expensive French easel to try painting outdoors. If you have two lawn chairs, you can use one to sit on and the other to hold your palette and painting...

Here is the setup I would recommend if you want to see if would enjoy painting outdoors. Two lightweight folding lawnchairs would work fine - and would be more portable than the patio chairs I used in these photos.

Taping everything down is an absolute must. Here I have taped a large plastic garbage bag over one of the chairs. I have also taped down every corner of my palette and my canvas board. If you use very lightweight chairs you may need to find something heavy to hold the legs down (a couple of bricks, for example). If you are thinking about taking an outdoor painting workshop, the most important thing is to try out your setup before the workshop. You could paint a small painting in your backyard to test everything out. When painting outdoors for the first time, it's amazing just how easy it is for everything to blow away, blow over, spill, or get knocked over. Testing out your setup beforehand shows you what needs to be taped down/weighted down more securely. Then, with your setup problems identified and solved, you'll be able to focus easily on the new artistic ideas you'll be learning in the workshop.