How a Walking Boot Led me to Search for the Perfect Urban Sketching Stool
After an ankle injury forced me to rethink 7 weeks of travel, I went searching for a sketching stool that was light enough to carry, quick to assemble and stable enough to trust. Here are my first impressions of the Grand Trunk Compass 360
MATERIALS & GEAR
8/11/20263 min read
After an ankle injury forced me to rethink seven weeks of travel, I went searching for a sketching stool that was light enough to carry, quick to assemble and stable enough to trust. Here are my first impressions of the Grand Trunk Compass 360.
I hadn’t planned to spend quite so much time thinking about chairs.
For years I had happily taken a small folding chair or stool with me when sketching. Then, partway through seven weeks of travelling around Europe by plane and train, I twisted my ankle and ended up in a walking boot.
Suddenly, the weight and bulk of everything I was carrying mattered rather more.
My usual Darche chair weighs around 1.5 kg. It is comfortable, but when you are travelling with a cabin-sized hard-shell bag, moving between trains and carrying all your sketching gear as well, 1.5 kg devoted entirely to somewhere to sit starts to feel extravagant.
I tried a very lightweight stool bought from Amazon. It packed down beautifully, but the legs were joined with shock cord and folded back through 180 degrees. I found it far too fiddly to assemble and pack away every time I wanted to sketch.
My ideal travel chair
What I really wanted was something:
light enough to carry all day
small enough to disappear into my sketching backpack
high enough to be comfortable for a proper sketching session
quick to put up and pack away
stable enough that I wasn’t worrying about tipping over every time I leaned towards my paints.
That was when I came across the Grand Trunk Compass 360.
Enter the Grand Trunk Compass 360
There are two versions of the Compass stool, the Compass 360 and the smaller Compass 360 Ultra Compact. Mine is the standard Compass 360.
It weighs approximately 450 g (1 lb) and has a seat height of around 38 cm (15 in).
The unusual feature is the seat itself, which swivels through 360 degrees. That sounded slightly gimmicky when I first read about it, but for sketching it actually makes a lot of sense. I can turn between my subject, sketchbook and paints without having to keep shifting the entire stool.
The seat is also lightly padded, which makes it feel considerably more chair-like than many ultralight stools.
Setting it up
The three legs simply pull out from the central frame and lock into position, so the basic structure takes only seconds to open.
The seat then has to be pulled over the top of the frame, with reinforced corner pockets fitting over the ends of the three supports. Two finger loops help pull the final corners into place. Mine was quite tight at first, although I could manage it. I have read that it becomes easier as the fabric loosens slightly with use.
Once assembled, it feels remarkably solid for something so light.
Packing it away is equally straightforward once the seat has been released from the frame, and it comes with its own small carry bag.
First impressions
So far, I am impressed.
The three-legged design is surprisingly stable and I can lean forward towards my paints without feeling as though I am about to tip off it. The swivel is smooth and genuinely useful rather than simply being a novelty.
At 38 cm high, it is also a much more comfortable sketching height for me than many of the tiny ultralight camping stools.
Possibly most importantly, it fits beautifully into my current sketching set-up. In its bag, it lies across the bottom of my Decathlon backpack almost as though the bag was designed around it. My A4 sketchbook sits in the laptop compartment, my paints and field case fit in the front pocket and there is still plenty of room left for everything else.
That makes a huge difference. A chair can be wonderfully comfortable, but if it is awkward or heavy enough that I decide not to take it, it isn’t much use as a sketching chair.
So, is it the perfect urban sketching stool?
It is far too early for me to say that yet.
At the moment, though, the Compass 360 seems to tick an unusually large number of my boxes: light, compact, quick to assemble, comfortable, stable and high enough for sketching.
The swivel may even turn out to be one of those features I didn’t know I needed.
The real test will be a longer sketching session, followed by repeated use on cobblestones, uneven ground and overseas workshops. I’ll update this review once I have spent considerably more time sitting—and swivelling—on it.
Disclosure: I bought the Grand Trunk Compass 360 myself from Frontier in Australia. It was on sale at the time for around half the usual price. I have no connection with Grand Trunk or Frontier and this is not a sponsored review