Proportion—the relationships between elements of your subject—and perspective—accurate rendering of space—are laid out for you in the ghost image. Without a ready way to experience the remarkable power of these simple but now-uncommon devices, its understandable how artists and historians might ascribe near-supernatural drawing skills to the artists who used them. While being an all-round brilliant fellow, Herschel quietly created one of the finest portfolios of camera lucida drawings ever.

PO Box, APO/FPO, Afghanistan, American Samoa, Barbados, Belarus, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Guam, Iraq, Israel, Liberia, Libya, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Micronesia, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Palau, Reunion, Russian Federation, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Somalia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U.Although portable camera lucidas were widely used by artists in the 19th century, they have not been manufactured since the Great Depression, and have been virtually absent from art schools for generations. I tend to believe this theory too as the perspective alignment of say Vermeer’swork is very photographic in structure. It is a difficult question, regardless on how it has been constructed it is the end product that should be appreciated. My mission has always been to build the best drawing tool possible, inspired by the time-tested technologies of the old masters.

Indeed, the device is so effective in assisting accurate life-drawing that, according to the controversial Hockney-Falco hypothesis, its now believed that many of the most admired drawings of the 19th Century, such as the Neoclassical portraits of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, could only have been made with a camera lucida. I used mine to sketch a pencil with a radical skull head he had given me as a gift and presented him with the cool tool and sketch over takeout Chinese on our back porch. It was when I had conversations with fellow artists about ways to get more people to join us in trying the tool that the idea of manufacturing a new camera lucida became the NeoLucida. I love looking into such devices and theories in which photography and photographic based tools/techniques are more embedded in traditional art practice than we think.The original NEOLUCIDA uses a historical prism design, but these prisms are difficult to use and the images hard to see, making it tough to draw from. Set up the NeoLucida Plus to look at a printed image or a computer screen and make a hand-drawn copy! They published Incidents of Travel in Central America (1841) and Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America (1844) to great acclaim. The NeoLucida PLUS setup: Clamp to a table, position the viewer over your page with your subject in front of you.