Artist David Hockney oncestirred up controversyby swan that many of the great Dutch masters — folks likeVermeerandIngres — had trust on optical drawing assist to create their masterpieces . Now everyone can channel their inner Dutch lord with theLUCY drawing tool .
It ’s designed by Les Cookson , an creative person and inventor who has been building , researching and design optical plaything and tools for over 10 years . Conceptually , LUCY is base on thecamera lucida , an opthalmic creative person ’s help invented by an English physician named William Wollaston in 1807 .
The early camera lucida was fundamentally an extendible underground with a reflecting optical prism and sight lens , mounted on a spliff that could be attached to a drawing off table or surface . The prism was deliberately forge and oriented so that the rays of light from the scene were meditate twice within the optical prism before reaching the centre .
This way , the heart sees the image the veracious mode up , rather than inverted , which is what go on with your typicalcamera obscura(i.e . , a unsubdivided pinhole camera ) . When the stand is adjusted so that the optical prism half covers the schoolchild of the centre , the creative person has the semblance of seeing both the object – which is reflected through the optical prism – and its outlines on the drawing board .
According to Cookson’sKickstarter Thomas Nelson Page , “ When you look through the LUCY ’s view hole , optical mirror create a limpid “ ghostwriter ” image of the scenery in front of you chew over down onto your canvas or paper . Just draw or paint over the mull look-alike to get the correct perspective , foreshortening , balance , position , overlap , Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe . ”
This is n’t the first company , or even the firstKickstarter , to offer amodern take on the television camera lucida : back in 2014 , fine art professorsPablo Garcia(Art Institute of Chicago ) andGolan Levin(Carnegie Mellon ) designed theNeoLucidaandsoldthe drawing off aid for about $ 50 .
Cookson outlines several benefits of LUCY over similar tools . you may adjust the brightness of the mental image as needed , as well as the the height . And it ’s elastic enough that you expend the equipment while sitting at an easel ( or a table ) , or while suffer .
One caveat : even thesemodern incarnationsof the tv camera lucida require a bit of skill to apply . recollect , it does n’t actually picture an figure of speech of the subject onto newspaper ; the image seems to appear on the lottery open only when the artist looks straight down into the optical prism . And even slight movement of the drumhead will cause the image to move , disrupting the accuracy of the tracing .
That ’s why NeoLucidahas a special instructional pagefor users that really emphasizes this particular point : “ Do n’t seem into the optical prism ! or else , look down past the edge of the optical prism . You should be looking at your real hand , and see a ghostwriter image of your issue . look directly down is absolutely decisive to using a camera lucida properly ! If you do n’t see your pencil and paper , you ’re not looking flat down . If you see your subject upside - down , you ’re not face straight down . ”
get that ?
The LUCY Kickstarter closes in a couple of days , but Cookson has already bring up more than $ 66,000 — far above his original $ 12,000 goal — and bear to pop ship the puppet in July .
[ Boing Boing ]
scientific discipline
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and civilisation news show in your inbox daily .
News from the time to come , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
