Does this Weird Drawing Tool actually WORK? - "Art Hack" Test!

lucy is this tool i bought two years ago and i sat in my shelf and when i was cleaning wasn't cleaning i just stumbled across it when i was making more mess but the lucy drawing tool that i that was mailed out in 2018 is one of the things i stumbled across and i remembered it and thought that would be an interesting one to share with you guys and to experience i've never tried it but i remember seeing random like online ads that looked super cheesy and i bought what you know what let's watch the cheesy ads before we open it lucy drawing tool most versatile camera loose cedar ever camera lucida camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists it's like a mirror so you're looking down with one eye you're drawing and the other eye is looking forward at what you're trying to draw and apparently as you can see by these old-ass drawings on wikipedia the lucy is the modernized drawing tool the lucy drawing tool look at this let's watch this ad why don't we have better ways to help today's artists draw faster and better just so far sure you could painstakingly copy a photo with a grid if you like mind-numbing monotony and accidental cubism sure you could copy it with a grid if you're a dingus this advertisement is like making me feel this big you could trace in the dark with an overheating art projector if you're into nocturnal arts and crafts you can trace in the dark with a projector if you're a dumbass or if you've always wanted to become a human copy machine light boxes are great for tiny tracings this is so mean this whole ad is like if you really want to be a piece of you could draw in any number of other ways but only there was a way to use the old master secrets to work faster and better from photos and not make you want to just give up and call it abstract art i just want to give an award to this actress she's amazing forget the whole art thing for a minute here and just appreciate the art of her performance because i'm the knowledgeable disembodied narrator with all the answers the lucy drawing tool place whatever you want to draw in front of you and look down into the view hole you'll see your subject reflected over your paper or canvas draw around the image until you have a good sketch basically what he's trying to say through all the sass is it's a it's a way to trace that's better than all the other ways of tracing so i bought it and we're going to put it to the test i'm never going to trace like a pleb ever again because i have the lucy that's all i need to know all set all right this is the uh let's take it over to the drawing area let's get some drawing go obviously i can't really use this on my normal desk because it's a whole contraption and i need space so we've got the clamp for the desk we'll put this down here and this is the mechanism it's like a mirror on one side and it's a window on the other let's set it up there's nothing more satisfying of doing this now i need something to draw with and something to draw let's start off with this guy all right that's pretty trippy interesting in fact at this point i can start to show you what i'm seeing when i look through here so when i look through here there you go see you actually can see it this is giving a reflection of my dude over there onto that weird mirror thingy and onto the paper so let's just say for argument's sake here's a use the head and i can't really see what i'm drawing because i've got the camera in front of them the lucy when i've drawn those few lines when i move around which keep in mind like look at how much i'm moving here this is like you know millimeters so i guess you have to stay really still i don't think it's helping that my reference is far away i actually feel like it's probably gonna be better if it's close there we go okay that seems a little better and there's less movement too but i'm just looking at his torso oh my god i have to move him down some setup required i think i've got it after a lot of marketing how long has it been it's been like two hours getting ready but that's actually a cool position and it does look cool let's let's get stuck into this and we'll see if the lucy is all she's cracked up to be i have anything clever to say though that's it oh wait wait i could add okay i've got one now and then we'll see at the end of the day if i love lucy that was weird [Music] so i'm pausing it i'm going to call it the halfway mark i've drawn as much as i can see that is that is everything i see now it's going to be really hard to show you this but i want to try because basically my problem is there's a plethora of detail there's plenty of stuff to see geometrically but when you look through here there's really nothing there there's basically the contrast between the light the dark on the left most side of the character where the brightest highlights are but yeah it's really hard to see anything the other issue is positioning as you can see the drawing shifts around and drifts based on where my eye is it's this weird balancing act of keeping my head perfectly still sometimes resting like this thing on my eye so it doesn't move and then if i get it right and i move to other areas of the illustration i look back to where i initially drew and notice that i've drifted a little that the lines that i first drew are a little bit out so then i have to like realign myself to where i first drew and then go back to where i was i have to keep recalibrating to the first area that i drew it's a really inorganic way of doing this i'm gonna persist i'm gonna keep going until we get to the end i'm gonna try and do some shading and stuff but the problem is i can't see any i'm just going to work with what i see through this thing because that's what this whole video is about so i'm going to shade based on the shading that i see here might end up looking cool or creative i don't know but we'll do that and then we'll try a few other things to see if there's an optimum way of using the lucy [Music] before we actually look at what i've just drawn with it i'm going to try and do the same thing with two other methods of copying one just by eye if i'm just looking at it and drawing and then the other with a photo but what i'm going to do is to keep it all on the level playing field i'm going to do it in the same time frame then after i've copied it in two other ways we'll have a look at those results and then we'll come back to the lucy results and see if they hold up and if the discomfort has been in any way worth it in some sort of payoff so the first of these two alternative methods of copying is just copy i'm looking at what i'm drawing and i'm trying to draw it now it's hard this is the hardest method of copying it's really hard to depict three-dimensional geometry on paper or even replicate something two-dimensional on a two-dimensional piece of paper because it's using your limited brain and capacity to reinterpret those shapes and proportions and put it down without any other reference as hard as it is though it is of course the the best way of copying because if you get good at it you don't need anything else and it is a fantastic training mechanism that helps your ability to understand and interpret and depict shapes and form that can apply and improve your artwork overall so it's hard but it's also the best and though it is the method most prone to issues when it comes to proportion or accurate representation it also can be the one that produces the most organic results because it uses your natural instincts and your style [Music] ah [Music] [Music] and last but not least the grid method now there are other ways of copying but the grid is a really nice balance because it still leans on your ability to reference an original two-dimensional image but basically wherever the intersecting points of the grid are you have a really clear way to sort of anchor yourself uh to help keep your proportions in line now obviously at the end you have to get rid of the grid if you want a really clean result so one of the ways to do that is to just draw the grid really really lightly and then draw the illustration with ink or a different medium and then of course you can erase the line work underneath but it's also a happy medium as far as learning how to copy things well because it utilizes that first one i demonstrated you're just training your eye and your ability to interpret and redepict shapes and forms and stuff but you also have something to lean on of course i'm not demonstrating tracing or using a projector which is what the lucy is saying it can do better than those things at but i thought i'd show you the most practical ways of copying even though they are more prone to mistakes they're also the most useful and can help your skills in all other artistic areas but honestly if you want to trace and we'll keep exploring the lucy after these yeah i think the spoiler is there are other easier ways [Music] all right so we're going to go through the various methods of copying that i might normally go to and then we'll compare to the lucy starting off with the grid method the first half of the grid method is the slightly awkward half because you're basically just like drawing lines and positioning uh areas of geometry that you're referencing but then the last half that's when you get to bring in your style and much more of an organic feeling you find your flow and you just dive into it so next this is just by eye this is me looking at my model here and just drawing it obviously there's there's less accuracy compared to my grid method illustration yeah it's more cartoony yeah it's a little more out of proportion but i actually feel like it it sort of has a little more heart it sort of retains my personal style even more so you know there are pros and cons to every method and if i want to go uh more realistic obviously i'd go grid or different method or would i go with the lucy well let's see lucy let's see is there something there lucy how we did all right that's not bad this is my see that's worse than i remember even though i'm actually more directly tracing with the lucy compared to my other attempts it just looks different it looks less like what i'm referencing that may be that i am ineffectively uh showing what i'm looking at through here it may be that i need more light on the subject it may be that having the black backing between me and what i'm looking at is not the way to do it and i want to just change some of the lighting and backing conditions of this thing to see what is effective if anything is effective all right so the gopro is in a pretty good place even now look how shaky the the eye hole of the lucy is oh god i need i want to cover that reflection too maybe i'll put some tape over it so i'm going to try and just block all reflections so we can do this as accurately as possible and it might keep this bloody thing still okay i think that's working for me so i can see things pretty clearly and you can see what i was trying to copy there okay i think we're in a good spot now all right so i'm going to turn this around so i can see over there so the moment i've got a pretty soft but dark and unintrusive black paneling background like these charcoal panels so is it clearer with white yes and no that's interesting it's clearer in terms of like where the edges in the dark area are but you have then the same problem with the lighter areas in that you can't necessarily see like if it's like a a flat light then you're losing the contrast directly against that side but you get it back on the shadow side so you have to be somewhere in the middle i guess i don't know maybe the lighting itself isn't strong enough so we'll play around with that so what is working for it and what is it oh okay so strong light is all right you can see some of the detail that's pretty clear that is a lot clearer this is so convoluted if i really blast light on this right side which is in front of the black backdrop and then i put a white backdrop in front of the shadowed side of the figure that's going to be the clearest reference [Music] all right still losing quite a lot of detail on the shadow side do you just light the whole thing super strong then then you have to copy something without any dynamic lighting oh my god this is so dumb and i mean look at this this is what we've got going to try and make this work it's a lot it's more than you should need to do but let's give it a go i'm just gonna see if it feels any better i mean it's clear to look at but to draw like as soon as i'm looking at it i'm like oh yeah that's cool that is much clearer there's much more depth right optimize everything that pops out but then i have to draw it i really don't want to because it's not at all comfortable or enjoyable i really don't want to use this again i'm going to call it i really do okay that's my review i hate it to be honest if i wanted a completely proportionate accurate photorealistic re-depiction of something in real life i would do one of two things i would use a light box or take a photo other than that anything else as well you know i don't think da vinci used it no matter what they tell you in the commercial that is it for this video i hope you found it interesting if not amusing i i actually found it really quite thoroughly uh fascinating to see the direct comparison between those three versions of copying so let me know in the comments which you think is most effective or if you've ever used one of these things and if there is a use i'm missing that uh that i should hold on to it for i'll give it a go in another video otherwise thank you so much for watching make sure to like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more fun with art and creativity and occasionally gimmicky art toys that's it for now thank you for watching and i've said thank you for watching like four times haven't i i'm very grateful that you're watching until next time i'll see you later

Channel: Jazza

Views: 1,031,733

Rating: 4.9578366 out of 5

Keywords: josiah, brooks, jazza, jazzastudios, animation, newgrounds, flash, humor, drawing, adobe, photoshop, Artist, Painting, challenge, funny, crazy, weird, draw, art, entertainment, hillarious, bob ross

Id: -uBpMtURTfs

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020