So, I had an art teacher five or six years ago who told our class, “You can draw anything you want in this class…but I don’t want to see any rainbows or crying unicorns.”
I will admit that when I picked up a pencil and looked at a blank piece of paper that first day, I really…I mean really, really wanted to draw a freakin’ rainbow and a crying unicorn. I didn’t. of course. I just drew whatever he’d suggested that we work on that first day, but I still remember the feeling of that pencil in my hand, and the grin on my face. God, how hard I had to fight to keep myself from acting like a five year old.
So, is this a silly story about resisting a childish impulse? Or is it an allegory about the string of concessions that is an adult’s life–day after day doing what should be done rather than following a heart’s desire? Or is it just a sorry excuse for a blog post? You be the judge.
I’ll leave you with this:
Happiness isn’t at the end of the rainbow.Happiness is at the beginning of the rainbow.Following the rainbow is happiness,not getting to the end of it.– Werner Erhard
Melissa DeCarlo 
To me, what the teacher was saying was to find out what makes your experience (and therefore artwork) unique. It was a call to delve into your true heart’s desire and not latch onto some lame popular representation of what you think you feel.
Although I suppose that you could have been suppressing your heart’s desire to give him the finger, and the crying unicorn under the rainbow would have been very apt for that.
He was being funny and yes, obviously he was telling us not to just fall into some popular image/metaphor trap and be original…and yes…it was my desire to give him the finger that prompted me to dream of drawing Unicorns. See, apparently I feel more free to express myself while driving in traffic than I do in an art class. Hmmmm….