I can’t see any advantage to go to the trouble to make one. Use an opaque projector with a photo reference, a slide projector with a transparency, or scare up a lucida projector, which is a kind of opaque projector. We had one at an ad agency I worked at that I’d use for working up marker comps for newspaper ads. You loaded your reference in the top compartment where a light bulb and reflector were, and the image was transferred down through a lense onto a small tabletop. You raised or lowered the top compartment to adjust the size of the image on your paper.

Thank you for your answer! Nice to hear that they still are in use at ad agencies. I like old things.

Well, bear in mind that this was over 30 years ago, just before desktop publishing and digital art became available. That said, even after working on the computer, with all of the resources available, I missed sitting all day drawing with markers or a Rapidograph pen to do product illustration.

Have you checked this out?

[URL]http://www.jerrysartarama.com/the-lucy-drawing-tool-flexible-camera-lucida[/URL]

Interesting. Basically seems like a mini camera obscura. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, though.

I’m surprised how cheap it is.

I read that many ancient artists used [I]camera obscura[/I]. Has anybody tried it nowadays?
Just curious how it really works. And maybe this old technology still have some little advantage to compare with today’s possibilities?

It is not true that many ancient artists used the camera obscura.

The most likely old master artist to have used the camera obscura is Jan Vermeer, but it is not certain that he did at all, since he never owned one and there were no optical items in his estate when he died. There is also scientific evidence to the contrary, that he used perspective lines and a vanishing point in his underpaintings, which would be a redundant exercise if he were tracing his images. He was friends with one of the Huygens brothers, who were wealthy enough for one of them to own one (they were extremely expensive and unwieldy) and they lived 4 miles away, so not so convenient to trace every painting. My opinion is that he may have traced one or possibly a couple of paintings and then emulated the effects with the rest.

As for using it today, there is no reason to resort to the inferior and inverted image of a camera obscura for tracing, when we have such great cameras and projectors to use today…… if tracing your images is what you want to do. I personally use a projector to trace my cartoons on canvas instead of tediously transferring them using grids etc. I often think about the camera obscura when I do it.