The Artist's Block

SCOTT ADAMS: if you're going to create, create a lot. Creativity is not like playing the slot machines, where failure to win means you go home broke. with creativity, if you don't win, you're usually no worse off than if you hadn't played. The Joy of Work(HarperBusiness

Copyright, Keith Haring Estate

Colors

In the first grade, Mr. Lohr said my purple tepee wasn't realistic enough, that purple was no color for a tent, that purple was a color for people who died, that my drawing wasn't good enough to hang with the others. I walked back to my desk counting the swish swish swishes of my courderoy trousers. With a black crayon, nightfall came to my purple tepee in the middle of the afternoon. In the second grade, Mr. Barta said, "Draw anything!" He didn't care what. I left my paper blank and when he came around to my desk, my heart beat like a tom-tom while he touched my head with his big hand and in a soft voice said,"the snowfall. How clean and white and beautiful!"

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,

When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing "Ha, Ha, He!"
When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
When our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
Come live and be merry, and join with me,
To swing the sweet chorus of "Ha,Ha,He!" William Blake

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering, dancing in the breeze. William Wordsworth

How do you like to go up in a swing
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it is the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside --

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown --
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down! Robert Louis Stevenson

Far across hill and dale
The blossoms of the plum have cast
A delicate pink veil. Basho

No Crayons

The kindergarten class had settled down to its coloring books. Willie came up to the teacher's desk and said, "Miss Francis, I ain't got no crayons."

"Willie," Miss Francis said, "you mean, "I don't have any crayons.' You don't have any crayons. We don't have any crayons. They don't have any crayons. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Not really," Willie said, "What happened to all them crayons?"