NeoLucida PLUS

We've spent nearly a year redesigning the original prism NeoLucidafrom the ground up. The result is a NeoLucida fit for beginners but with integrated accessories to advance your drawing skills.

What's new in the NeoLucida Plus?

• The prism is completely redesigned to provide a compact but bright ghost image.
• The integrated shader helps you control the amount of light on your subject. It's like custom sunglasses for your NeoLucida!
• Precision Aperture Control Paddles vary the size of the eyepiece opening. Use them to dim light and to create more precise image alignments of ghost image and drawing. Sharp!
• Duluxe Edition includes both NeoLucida PLUS and NeoLucida XL eyepiece, and 3 (firm, balanced and soft.) NeoLucida x Blackwing speicial edition pencils.

All these design upgrades make the NeoLucida Plus easier to use and provide advanced features for both beginning and experienced artists alike.

 

How does it work?

The NeoLucida PLUS setup: Clamp to a table, position the viewer over your page with your subject in front of you. It uses a precision glass prism to combine a virtual ghost image of your subject and the real view of your hand. Setting it up is easy:

• Clamp the NeoLucida Plus to a table or sturdy drawing board.
• Bend the adjustable gooseneck so that the viewer is facing your subject and positioned over your paper.
• Look straight down into the viewer to see your page and a ghost image of your subject superimposed.
• Trace what you see!

When you look down into the NeoLucida Plus eyepiece, the edge of the prism splits your view. The upper part of your vision is diverted towards your subject. The lower part of your vision sees directly to your page. But your brain blends the two views, making it look like your subject is "projected" onto your paper. You see your subject and your drawing at the same time, so you can trace directly from real life.

The split-vision prism in action. Part of your view goes past the prism towards your paper. The other part is directed through the prism to see your subject. Your brain combines the two views to make it look like your subject is a ghost image on your page. Science!

No matter your skill level, the NeoLucida Plus helps you make more accurate drawings. Proportion—the relationships between elements of your subject—and perspective—accurate rendering of space—are laid out for you in the ghost image. You can even compose your scene before you draw so your subject fits on your paper the way you want it to. All of this means you can focus on the most important part of drawing: putting pencil to paper. Controlling a pencil to make beautiful lines takes practice. With the NeoLucida Plus, you spend less time on laying out your drawing and more time drawing.

What can I draw with the NeoLucida? 

Use your NeoLucida anytime you want to draw accurately from real life. 

Still Life Drawings. Set up a bouquet of flowers, a bowl of fruit, your favorite stuffed animal, or even a replica skull from anatomy class and use the NeoLucida Plus to capture it from any angle!

Portraits and Figure Drawings. Bring it along to your next figure drawing class for quick studies of human form. Have your friend pose for you and try making portraits!

Landscapes. Take a sturdy table outside and draw en plein air! (That's art-speak for "drawing outside"!) If you can stabilize the NeoLucida Plus on a cafe table or portable easel, you can draw in cities, parks, or anywhere in nature! You can even take it to the desert.

 

Image Copies. Want to study great works of art? Or maybe you want to enlarge or reduce an image you clipped from a magazine? Set up the NeoLucida Plus to look at a printed image or a computer screen and make a hand-drawn copy! 

The NeoLucida isn't lens-based, so there is nothing to focus. Draw anything in front of you from 6 inches/15cm to infinity. If you can see it through the eyepiece, you can draw it! 

But I can't draw. Learning to draw realistically can be incredibly frustrating. There are a lot of skills operating at once when you make a realistic drawing because drawing realistically from life most overcome some hurdles:

• Your page is flat, but the world is three-dimensional. 
• When you look at your subject, you aren't looking at your paper; when you look at your paper, you aren't looking at your subject. 
• Drawings build up lines, meaning that your second line builds off your first line, your third line builds off your second line. Tiny mistakes compound each time, leading to frustratingly inaccurate drawings. 

As an art professor (Pablo Garcia), I believe everyone can draw. Every child makes marks with crayons, many adults doodle, and most everyone can write with a pencil. That means that most every human on Earth can hold a pencil and control where it goes. But drawing realistically is a special level of control that most people haven't practiced. A select few of us can do this without much effort, but even those who draw realistically well practice A LOT! When I made the NeoLucida, thousands of people started drawing more because a simple tool helped them overcome some of those fundamental barriers. The NeoLucida doesn't make you an expert overnight, but it can help you take those first steps. 

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