The Neolucida XL is interesting — but finicky.
It has a shade slide, which helps when the sky and notebook are bright but the bottle and yard aren’t quite as bright. The image is very sensitive to the angle you’re looking through. You have to be standing over it on a table. Ergonomically challenging. Scale is controlled by how far the apparatus is from the paper — no zoom knob.
It helps with proportion; Loomis said beauty is beauty of proportion. I did one without the Lucida first, then remembered I had it. The one without felt better in some ways — more Morandi. But I consider the Lucida important; Hockney mentioned Ingres used it and so its important to me. I drew a quick draft without it, but when I tried to stitch the San Gabriels behind the bottle I failed — the perspective didn’t work. With the Lucida, this kind of logic and proportions are exactly right.
What drawing or tracing with a camera lucida doesn’t have is as much of you and your mind inside the process. The image passes more quickly through you tracing from the bottle to the paper through a half-mirror, in a narrow, clear way. A fun tool. A good tool. But one of many.
I want to study more Morandi — there’s something about that minimalism. Why is he drawing only bottles and pots? He’s looking for something simple, and so am I.
Forest has a nice example in his book — a photo he took of water reflecting on a mountain. From my table in the yard here I can see a fence and the San Gabriel mountains. But the composition from this angle isn’t very good. This is where my table is, and where it’s shady enough at this point in the day.
Found Vallein Tercinier through an AMA on r/cognac — Dan, marketing at Croizet, writing about what the labels don’t tell you. Asked which names come up when glasses get poured after hours, he named Tercinier. “Fascinating, slightly offbeat parcels, especially in older releases.” Wine-Searcher showed one result in LA — Wine House.
Beautiful, smooth, clean, flammable — gorgeous gasoline vapor, if there was such a thing. And there is; that’s what it is. I love this one. Like Ardbeg’s medicinal bandaids: bad and good at once, but smoother — doesn’t reach as hard.
It’s so dry — the chalk, the Petite Champagne. Very dry, but still has the fruit. Incredibly complex. Almond, toasted oak — hazelnut. Ugni Blanc — and the VSOP is speaking to an age.
Drinking from a Glencairn. Just the nose: alcohol — what Dan called vapour. Noticeable, appealing, not overdone.
On the next sips, maybe plum, dark ink. More depth, more bitter. And then the perfume — a tininess, a sharpness, pleasant. You feel it more than you taste it — per Dan.
The VS is open too. Absolutely lovely, but fewer layers — more wine distillate, less age.
Haven’t opened the Hors d’Age yet. That’s where I’d expect rancio. Dan’s description from the same thread: “Walnut, dried fig, antique wood, leather, mushroom, old books, a touch of soy sauce — but in vapour form. More about mood than flavour. You feel it more than you taste it.” Will report back.
Links
- Neolucida XL — camera lucida drawing tool
- Giorgio Morandi — Wikipedia
- Museo Morandi — Google Arts & Culture — free online collection
- Vallein Tercinier — Domaine des Forges, Chermignac
- Wine House, LA
- Frédéric Forest — artist, Art of the Line in Drawing
- r/cognac AMA — Dan at Croizet — what the labels don’t tell you