Caravaggio, Vermeer, indeed many of the “Old Masters” of painting most-likely used cutting-edge technology of their day to accomplish the precise details we find in their works. While some view this as the art-world equivalent of saying there’s no Santa Claus, others would simply like to have access to that technology for the making of their own works. The gold standard: the centuries-old camera lucida, which projects the image of the painter’s subject onto the paper to be traced.
Discouraged by the cost of antique camera lucidas – $350-plus these days – art professors Golan Levin and Pablo Garcia decided to make their own portable version: the NeoLucida. Having sold an initial 2,500 through a Kickstarter campaign, the pair are now making an unlimited number of them available for $30 each.
