I have wanted to paint since I was in my twenties. Not professionally — I'm an accountant, I have no illusions about my artistic talent — but for myself. For the pleasure of it. I used to sketch a little, years ago, and I remembered how it felt to be absorbed in something creative, how the rest of the world went quiet when you were focused on a page.
Life got in the way, as it does. Career, marriage, two children, a house that always needed something doing to it. The idea of painting stayed on a shelf in my mind, one of those things I'd get to eventually. Eventually kept not arriving.
Then I turned 47 and decided that eventually was now.
The Barrier That Had Always Stopped Me
The honest reason I'd never started was the setup. Oil painting, specifically, felt intimidating from a practical standpoint. What paints do you need? What brushes? What surface? What medium? Do you need an easel, and if so, what kind? I'd looked into it a few times over the years and always ended up overwhelmed by the number of decisions before I'd even touched a brush. I'd close the browser tab and tell myself I'd research it more thoroughly another time.
What I needed was something that made all those decisions for me. A complete set, curated by people who knew what a beginner actually needed, that I could open and start using without a week of research first.
Why I Chose the Royal & Langnickel Set
The Royal & Langnickel Oil Painting Art Easel Set was exactly what I'd been looking for without knowing it existed. Everything in one place: 12 oil paints, linseed oil, 4 brushes, a palette knife, palette, pencil, eraser, sharpener, 3 acrylic A4 boards, and an apron. A fully adjustable tabletop easel with an inbuilt drawer to keep everything organised. And when you're done, the whole unit folds flat and goes into a canvas carry bag.
Royal & Langnickel is a name I recognised from art supply conversations I'd had over the years — a brand with genuine credibility in the artist community, not a generic set assembled purely for the gift market. That mattered to me. I didn't want to start with tools that would frustrate me before I'd had a chance to find out whether I enjoyed it.
The tabletop format was also the right call for my situation. I don't have a studio. I don't have a spare room. I have a kitchen table and a corner of the bedroom. A tabletop easel that folds away completely is the only kind of easel that works in my life.
Opening the Set
It arrived in good condition and well-packaged. Opening it felt like the beginning of something — which sounds dramatic, but after twenty years of meaning to do this, it genuinely did. The easel is sturdier than I expected for a tabletop model. The inbuilt drawer is a practical detail that I've come to appreciate enormously: everything has a place, nothing gets lost, and setting up takes about ninety seconds.
The 12 oil paints cover a solid working palette — the primary and secondary colours plus a few essential neutrals. The brushes are a good starter selection across different shapes and sizes. The linseed oil, palette knife, and palette mean you have everything you need to actually mix and apply paint from the first session. The apron, which I initially thought was a slightly unnecessary addition, has saved my clothes on multiple occasions.
The First Painting Session
I sat down on a Saturday morning in January with a cup of tea, set up the easel on the kitchen table, and started. I had no plan. I mixed some colours, made some marks, made some mistakes, mixed over the mistakes. I painted for two and a half hours without noticing the time passing.
The result was not good. It was a landscape of sorts, loosely interpreted, with a horizon line that wasn't quite horizontal and some trees that looked more like suggestions of trees than actual trees. But it existed. I had made it. And the process of making it had been exactly what I remembered from sketching twenty years ago — that quality of absorption, of the world going quiet, of being entirely present in what you're doing.
I set it aside to dry and immediately started thinking about what I'd paint next.
Six Months On
I paint most weekends now. Sometimes just an hour, sometimes most of a Saturday. I've worked through the included acrylic boards and moved on to proper canvas panels. My colour mixing has improved significantly. My trees look more like trees. I've started a small series of local landscapes — places I walk regularly, rendered in oil, slowly getting better with each one.
My husband has framed two of them and put them on the wall, which I find both touching and slightly mortifying. My daughter, who studies art at university, looked at my most recent piece and said it had "a nice quality of light," which I'm choosing to take as a genuine compliment rather than diplomatic encouragement.
The easel set is still my primary setup. The drawer keeps everything organised, the fold-flat design means it lives in the wardrobe between sessions and is out on the table in under two minutes. For a beginner working in a domestic space without a dedicated studio, it's genuinely ideal.
What Painting Has Done for Me
I didn't expect this, but painting has become the most effective form of stress relief I've found in years. Better than exercise, better than reading, better than anything else I've tried. There's something about the combination of physical engagement — mixing, applying, blending — and visual problem-solving that occupies the mind completely. You cannot worry about work while you're trying to get the colour of a winter sky right. The two things cannot coexist.
I'm calmer on Sunday evenings than I've been in years. I sleep better after a painting session. I look forward to weekends in a way that feels different from before — more purposeful, more mine.
Twenty years of meaning to start. I wish I'd done it at 27.
My Recommendation
If you've been meaning to try painting and keep finding reasons not to start, the Royal & Langnickel Oil Painting Art Easel Set removes every practical barrier. Everything you need is included. The setup takes minutes. The quality is good enough to learn on properly. And the fold-flat, carry-bag design means it works in any home, regardless of space.
Don't wait until you have a studio. Don't wait until you've done more research. Just start.
Find it in our store and browse more art supplies here:
Janet Okafor is an accountant and late-blooming oil painter based in Coventry. She has completed fourteen paintings since January, eleven of which she considers acceptable, and two of which are on her living room wall.
0 comments