I paint standing, and my back has started filing complaints
I have painted standing at the same tilted board for eighteen years and I am not about to change now, but I will admit the body is keeping score. Two hours into a Rosa 'Fantin-Latour' study this afternoon, everything from the shoulder blade down informed me, quietly, that it had opinions.
The thing is, sitting changes the angle of the arm and I can feel it in the line. Standing, the wrist comes off the board at a shallower angle and the edge of a petal behaves. Sit down and the whole stroke goes stiff and a little nervous. I know this sounds like superstition. I have tested it. It is not superstition.
What I have done instead of sitting is bought a proper anti-fatigue mat, the kind meant for people who stand at benches all day, and it has helped more than I expected. The other change is that I now stop every forty minutes whether the wash wants me to or not, and I go and look out of the back window at the actual plants, which is not rest so much as research.
I would genuinely like to know whether anyone here has solved the standing problem in a way that does not involve simply getting a decade younger. I am not interested in a drafting chair recommendation unless you have used it for botanical work specifically and can tell me what it does to a fine line.
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Standing makes total sense to me for that shallow wrist angle, the petal edge thing is real, not superstition. I paint standing too, though I only have maybe three hours in me before my lower back starts negotiating. What I have not solved is the shoulder. Do you keep the board tilted quite steep, or more upright? I keep fiddling with mine and never settle on the right height.
The steep tilt is what saves the shoulder, in my experience. I go close to forty-five degrees, and I raise the whole board so the top edge is roughly at my sternum. If the top edge drops below the ribs you end up reaching down and forward all day, and the shoulder pays for the petal edge.
Height matters more than tilt, I would say. When I was younger I had a lower board, thinking it was the classic setup. It was not, it was just bad for the trapezius.
Forty-five is steeper than I run, but the sternum point is the part I keep coming back to. Mine sits nearer the ribs and I have been telling myself that is high enough. It evidently is not, since the shoulder is the one complaining and not the wrist.
I have been blaming the tilt for eighteen years and it may simply have been the height all along. That is a slightly annoying thing to learn about one's own studio. I will raise it this week and see whether the trapezius notices, though I expect the first two days will feel wrong in the line before they feel right in the arm.
Steeper than most people expect, about forty degrees off the horizontal, and the top edge of the board sits just below my sternum. That is the height that matters more than the tilt, I think. If the board is too low you end up curving over it and the shoulder takes the whole load; too high and the elbow comes up and you lose the arm's weight behind the stroke.
I found mine by accident, honestly. I marked the easel with a pencil at the height that felt right and then measured it, because I did not trust myself to find it twice by feel alone.
Three hours is respectable. I did not manage three hours at the start either. And the lower back is usually the board being too low rather than you being worn out, in my experience. Worth an inch of trial before you blame the spine.