Learn to Paint and Draw Like the Old Masters at Mellwood Art Center

A camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists. It was patented in 1806 by William Hyde Wollaston. There seems to be evidence that the camera lucida was actually a reinvention of a device clearly described 200 years earlier by Johannes Kepler in his Dioptrice (1611). (cf. Edmund Hoppe, Geschichte der Optik, Leipzig 1926)

The camera lucida performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed and the surface on which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously, as in a photographic double exposure. This allows the artist to transfer key points from the scene to the drawing surface, thus aiding in the accurate rendering of perspective. From Wikipedia

Instructor Michel Samson, native of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, comes from a family which has been involved in the visual arts for generations. He had his first exhibition in Amsterdam as a child prodigy at the age of six. Since then, he has exhibited in various galleries in The Netherlands, Italy, and France. In 1971, he made his American debut in a group show in New York City. That same year he had a one man show at the opening of the Fort Wayne (IN) Arts Center, a building designed by legendary architect Louis I. Kahn.