In the early 1850s American painter, James McNeill Whistler, spent a brief-and academically unsuccessful-period at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. The story goes that when he was assigned to draw a bridge he drew a romantic stone one, complete with grassy banks and two small children fishing from it. “Get those children off that bridge!” said the instructor. “This is an engineering exercise.” Whistler got the kids off the bridge, drew them fishing from the bank of the river and resubmitted the drawing. The angry instructor yelled, “I told you to remove those children. Get them completely out of the picture!” But the creative urge was too strong .in Whistler. His next version had the children “completely out of the picture” indeed. They were buried under two small tombstones on the river bank. 🙂