With my regular sized paintings I can put them on my easel without any problems.
My easel by the way, is an old drafting table that was given to me by my previous employer of 17 years, the Eastern Irrigation District.
This was just before we started to use computers for all our drafting layout needs.
I believe it was 1986.....

Anyways! I have a mechanical arm that gets attached to the top rail.
I use the mechanical arm to move the piece that Im working on in any position I need to get better access to a certain area.

So lets say I want to work on the top right hand corner of a piece. I can move the arm and place that corner at eye level.

But since this painting is too big and heavy I had to take the arm off and attach a chunk of 1" x 2" board to the bottom of the drafting table.
This will hold the canvas in place.


Here I had to use a smaller canvas to hold the 30 x 40 canvas up a little higher so that I could draw at eye level.
I really miss my mechanical arm...lol