Sketching for Pleasure

SKETCHING FOR PLEASURE, R.O. Dunlop, hardcover with a dust jacket (not price-clipped), 52 B/W illustrations, 1954. BOOK CONDITION: very good. The text block is in fine condition with no dog-ears, tears, or marks. There is no bookplate nor signature of a prior owner. This is not a library book nor a remainder. The red cloth boards are in good condition (shelf rubbing of edges). The dust jacket is in fair condition (intact but with tears and edge chipping/creasing, age-toning inside, shelf rubbing). 7 ¼ x 4 ½, 142 pages, 7 ounces XX [From the dust jacket] This book is a companion to Mr. Dunlop's PAINTING FOR PLEASURE which became, in its class, a best-seller. Logically, says our author, this book on sketching should have come first, since it is the simpler art, can be performed in a single colour, involves only the slightest equipment, and is a very private occupation. SKETCHING FOR PLEASURE should, therefore, appeal widely. It is written in the same manner as Mr. Dunlop's earlier book: frankly and in a cheerful manner, with immense practicality, supported by a lifetime of thinking about - and practising - art. It is as free of vulgarity as it is of pomposity or the suggestion that art, and especially sketching, is the preserve of the expert. Mr. Dunlop's ideas are supported by generous illustration. Opportunity for sketching is as endless as equipment is simple: everywhere there are subjects. They can be a grouping in a street, a garden vista, a friend, a piece of furniture or a corner of a room, an animal or a pet, even a ripple in water, a cloud in sky. And the slightest, crudest effort, providing it is a reflection of your character, brings its rich reward in satisfying a creative instinct, in preserving a fleeting moment, in training yourself to see rather than merely to look. And (who knows?) you may find in sketching your 'secret talent'. (The Author) R. O. Dunlop was born in 1894 in Dublin of an Irish mother and a Scotch father. Early in his career he worked successively for a printer, an advertising agency and for W. H. Smith & Son. There followed intensive evening study at an art school, and a determination to succeed as a freelance artist. His first one-man show in 1926 at the Redfern Gallery was followed by election to the R.B.A. Some years later, the avant garde London Group elected him a member and he eventually became Chairman for three years, about the same time also being elected to the New English Art Club. In 1939 he became an Associate of the Royal Academy, and ten years later he was elected a full Royal Academician. Dunlop's art has always combined the modern with the traditional, and that fact, together with his great technical equipment and a true lyric vision, has given his work widespread recognition. …