It works just like the NeoLucida: Look down into the eyepiece to see a ghost image of your subject on your paper. OCA degrees are awarded by The Open University for students registering for the first time with OCA from August 2022. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

A side-note about “cheating”: I was surprised to find how many people accused Hockney of maligning the great western artists by suggesting they used tools to draw. In manufacturing a camera lucida for the 21st century, our aim is to stimulate interest in media archaeologythe tightly interconnected history of visual culture and imaging technologies. Hu, Raymond, “ Lucida Dreams Come True: Kickstart a 21st-Century Version of a 19th-Century Optical Drawing Aid“.By aligning the ghost image of the street with the drawing on my table, I was able to confirm that the geometry of the drawing matched the ghost image of the view. However, earlier this year when I was browsing Kickstarter, which is a crowd-funding platform to champion new inventions and ideas through mass public funding, I came across the Neolucida. I tend to believe this theory too as the perspective alignment of say Vermeer’swork is very photographic in structure.

Mary’s Abbey, Beddington (1815) is inscribed “Power of 5 in Patent Graphic Telescope”, marking this as one of the world’s first “telephoto” images, long before photographic camera optics would make this type of image common. Yet there are many artists out there where the actual act of making is integral to the work, as if the final piece is almost akin to a byproduct. The camera lucida provided the amateur draughtsman with an accurate way to depict the landscape, culture, and dress of the young America before the invention of photography. The NeoLucida was also released with an open-source hardware license, encouraging others to modify and develop their own camera lucida devices. Their travels, documented by Catherwood and his camera lucida and printed with fantastic detail, inspired new interest in Mayan culture and expeditions of Central America.

Skeptical scholars point out that there is no primary evidence to prove that artists like Ingres used devices like the camera lucida. I bought the NeoLucida Plus, it's a sharp bright image, and allows for accurate drawings from from my monitor, or from real life into a sketch.

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. The actual masters who used devices did so with respect for the process and manual, visual and conceptual skills abundant. At the other end of the telescope, a 45º mirror directs your vision out the side of the viewing tube, giving a second reflection to make your ghost image right-side-up and correct left-to-right.We want to make this remarkable device widely available to students, artists, architects, and anyone who loves to draw from life. And NEOLUCIDA's problems are unfortunately getting worse rather than better with a new Kickstarter project launching the NEOLUCIDA PLUS. Today my drawing skills are non-existent, even my stickmen are deformed abominations that would make most shake their head. He practiced more and more, using his observations and experience as the cornerstone for his growing thesis.