NeoLucida

What happens when two art professors resurrect an obsolete drawing tool from the 19th century? The NeoLucida Project is about art and technology history, provocative ways to fund design projects, and helping people learn how to draw. 

The NeoLucida is a modern reinterpretation of the camera lucida, a 19th century optical drawing aid. It superimposes an image of your subject onto your paper. You see your pencil and your subject at the same time. Trace what you see!

By the mid-1800s, camera lucidas were everywhere. Indeed, the device is so effective in assisting accurate life-drawing that, according to the controversial Hockney-Falco hypothesis, it's 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. This becomes astonishingly clear if you try one—a challenge since quality camera lucidas haven't been made in nearly a century. In 2013, 11,406 people backed our NeoLucida Kickstarter to bring this antique tool into the 21st century. 

But the NeoLucida is not just a product. It’s a provocation. In manufacturing a camera lucida for the 21st century, our aim is to stimulate interest in media archaeology—the tightly interconnected history of visual culture and imaging technologies. We want to make this remarkable device widely available to students, artists, architects, and anyone who loves to draw from life. Released from obscurity, NeoLucida entreats a generation of artists to ask: "What if you could trace what you see?" And: "How might artists in the 19th century have seen the world?" And: "How might tracing from life fit into contemporary art education?" And: "What is the historical relationship between art and technology?"

The NeoLucida Project. As someone who likes to draw, and has drawn consistently since I was little, I was surprised by how many people were drawn to (pun intended) these tools I make. Despite high resolution smartphone cameras in our pockets, people like to draw, and a lot of people have the desire to learn to draw.

What is The NeoLucida Project all about? 

1. Reviving historical art technologies that help people draw, in order to:

2. Demystify drawing and explore how people—past and present—learn to draw.

The NeoLucida Project Website • Buy a NeoLucida • NeoLucida on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook • NeoLucida User Group on Facebook