Tuesday, August 5, 2014

CAMERA LUCIDA Reinvented The 'New' Old Masters' Drawing Tool



New Device Combines Ancient Technology of Old Masters with Your Smartphone

Inventor Bring the Camera Lucida Drawing Tool into the Digital Age: Making Anyone an Artist by Blending Old and New Technology to create a Vibrant Traceable Image.


Artist and inventor Les Cookson is excited to announce his Kickstarter campaign, which will shake over two hundred years' worth of dust off the camera lucida drawing tool, and make it relevant to today's tech-savvy artists. This improved artist aid packs all the mystery, magic and controversy of the historical art tool with the ease and usefulness of a modern device. The crowd funding campaign is running now through September 6th, 2014. 
 
Controversy rages within art history circles as to how early camera lucidas and similar devices were used by artists. While books like David Hockney's 'Secret Knowledge, and Penn & Teller's recent movie Tim's Vermeer throw fuel onto the debate that some famous centuries-old paintings might have been done with one of these cameras. 
 
The LUCID-Art, Cookson's camera lucida, works by reflecting a transparent "ghost" image of the scene in front of it down onto the user's paper, so all they need to do is draw over the reflected image to get an accurate sketch in minutes. 
 
And now with the all-new ProjectorARM, the LUCID-Art will be able to project images to draw right from a smart phone onto one's drawing surface. “This project will build a bridge across centuries bringing together the ancient technology of the camera lucida with the modern technology we carry in our pockets everyday.” -Les Cookson, projector creator.

Some camera lucidas in the past could copy or reduce pictures, but never before has a camera lucida been able to project images from a smart phone's screen, and enlarge those images up to 5x the original size. Find out more on our campaign page: DrawLUCY.com

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