As long ago as 1807 – and possibly up to 200 years earlier – many artists used an optical device known as a camera lucida to help them in sketching subjects. A controversial theory even suggests that ...

Anyone who enjoys sketching and would like to be able to capture and outline of the subject they are painting or drawing a little quicker may be interested in a new piece of equipment created by the ...

It’s a widely held belief that the Old Masters were exactly that: masters, such as da Vinci and Vermeer, who painted in flawlessly precise freehand. There are savants with steady hands, no question.

It would be cool to have the ability to eyeball something sitting in front of you then draw it with some semblance of accuracy, but I’ll be damned if that kind of hand-eye coordination isn’t tough to ...

A couple of days ago I posted a blog about a KickStarter project to build something called the NeoLucida, which will be the lowest-cost commercial camera lucida ever (see A Camera Lucida for the 21st ...

Artist David Hockney once stirred up controversy by asserting that many of the great Dutch masters—folks like Vermeer and Ingres—had relied on optical drawing aids to create their masterpieces. Now ...

The NeoLucida lets you trace images from real life. So you have your iPad and your apps, and you even arranged a bowl of fruit/nude model (delete as applicable). But what about hardware? After all, ...