When all you have is a pencil, every problem looks like a Picasso

My friend Alison went to the Picasso exhibition in Toronto and she mailed me a book of postcards because she knew they would inspire me. I love Picasso.

There is a famous quotation: "It took me four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child." There was one hot summer about ten years ago and the only cool room where I was living was the kitchen, so I spent all day there, working on a set of pastels surrounded by the children's drawings tacked up to the wall. I learned something of how to draw like a child.


What children lack is not co-ordination or sense (although they lack both these, of course) but persistence. They can concieve  an original approach to a subject but they cannot work it through because they cannot recognise that they have hit upon something original and they are having too much fun to concentrate.

Having said that, it never hurts adults to let go and just draw, as I did this evening.

Related: Life Class