Let's do it, sketches of Children

Marcia Lane Foster

Published by Collins 48 Pall Mall London, hardcover, with four pictures in colour, ex-libris on end-paper.


LET'S DO IT" contains a collection of drawings from the more presentable pages of my sketch books. For the sake of convenience they have been grouped under various headings but they make an intentionally mixed bag.
Roughly speaking, my models are derived from two main sources; small strangers whom 1 stalk in the highways and by-ways, and youthful friends who have groven up to règard a sketch bonk as part of my everyday dress and therefore unworthy of attention.

There is a sporting element about the stalking which appeals to me. Sometimes it is I who get "shot." " What's that lady doing?" asleed a small girl in Kensington Gardens of her highly-starched nanny. "Not a lady, dear, only a rude woman drawing," came the devastating reply,
Sketching one's friends is rather less arduous; but in ei dier case the thrill for me is in the necessity for (piek, accurate and appreciative observation. Children are never still and therein lies the artist's difficulty. Success largely depends upon the speed at which one can grasp essential lines and record the most expressive shapes.

Two characteristics of childhood which I find particularly attractive are its simple enthusiasms and the unstudied abandon of its movements. These qualities may often be rendered more faithfully in a sketch than in a carefully finished drawing. For a sketch of a child from life is, of necessity, in the nature of a first thought (there being little time for a second). It is liable to all a first thought's incompleteness hut capable of all a first thought's …......