This is fun, and worth a few minutes glance: Creativity in the form of archived web pages from the dawn of the internet. When the web was first sprung upon the world in the 1990s, anybody could make a website themselves, but no pages had yet been made so there was no agreement on what a website should look like, then suddenly a million people created millions of websites without designers, but stuffed with colors, fonts, icons, animations, pictures, infinite scrolls, no limits. The exuberance is boundless. Someone selected the best from this wild big bang and merged it into one page. It’s our era’s folk art. — KK

Kids are so naturally creative they should be our art teachers. And their creativity is boundless as long as you don’t hamper them by calling the assignment making “art.” It’s more fun than that. Those two premises enliven artist Austin Kleon’s newest book, Don’t Call It Art. Kleon’s mission is encouraging creativity in kids and adults by means of stories, reminders, examples, and bits of his own art. His little tome is charming and inspirational. — KK

Obsessive effort spent on ridiculous memes, over-the-top projects about stupid things, absurd seriousness about nonsense. Also meticulous craftsmanship at scale: these are the hallmarks of art projects by Sunday Nobody, a young “meme artist” who posts on YouTube and Instagram. For a recent example of his gonzo projects, watch his Taco Bell Funeral. To finance his performances he sells limited editions of his very collectable art. His real art is the whole nerdy process. — KK

Sharpie makes pens that lay down a heavy layer of paint, instead of a thinner layer of ink. With these paint pens, you can make very visible marks on virtually anything. Sharpie Creative Markers work on glass, dark plastic, rusty metal, stone – surfaces that ordinary markers fail on. They come in lots of colors, and 3 different tip types. Artists like them on paper because they are very opaque yet don’t bleed through the other side. There are fancy brands of expensive paint pens made for artists, but the Sharpie versions are very affordable, about $1 per pen. — KK

My book of 800 unusual images from Asia — arranged by colors — is now available as an inexpensive digital book. Because it is so graphic the digital version works best as a PDF. You can order and download the digital Colors of Asia, anywhere in the world for $3.99. — KK

I like this fun list of what different places call “our Mona Lisa.” It’s not just museums or galleries. It includes single objects treated like sacred centerpieces by retail brands, jewelers, and more. I love the idea that any household can have its own Mona Lisa—something everything else seems to orbit around. — CD

When a 65-year-old oak tree died from fungal disease, artist Steve Parker carved slices of its trunk like vinyl records, etching bird songs into the wood grain. These playable oak records are featured in a 3-minute video where you can hear the sounds of the birds that once lived in the tree’s branches. Parker also created a brass sculpture with medical ventilators that splays out like tree roots—a reference to his father’s battle with cancer. “Funeral for a Tree” is a beautiful meditation on grief that inspires me to find ways to transform what’s been lost into something that still speaks—or sings. — CD

TeamLab produces immersive destinations that are worth going out of your way to see. They began in Japan, where they have four huge installations that offer entertaining environments, using lights, mirrors, video, projectors and other media magic inside giant rooms. Our family spent an exhilarating 3 hours in the TeamLab Borderless site in Tokyo wandering through the mazes of experiences with constant smiles. It dazzled kids and elders. Even though TeamLab have become Instagram hot spots, and art snobs consider it too commercial, I would recommend making a trip to experience Borderless yourself. Go with friends, it’s more fun. — KK

This 2-minute animated film blends art and therapy to guide viewers through somatic exercises for emotional regulation, especially when overstimulated or triggered in crowded spaces. Practices like resting your hands on your heart or stomach can create space for energy and also encourage it to move out of your body. These self-soothing techniques can be used when engaging with any creative medium or media, helping you to find calm and rootedness even in the busiest, most stressful environments. — CD

Check out the website Wplace. It’s a zany collaborative futuristic art project happening around the world, mostly created by young people. Like its predecessor r/place, Wplace lets people paint a single pixel at a time. But everyone layers the art over Google maps and most folks start with painting over their neighborhood. And like r/place, you can repaint over other art. So in order to make any kind of a picture large requires an incredible amount of coordination and collaboration with others – and any art produced must be fiercely maintained in order to remain. The ambience is true folk art – the lowest common denominator of anime characters, memes, sports brands, political flags, logos, graffiti, and creative patterns. Surprisingly the parts of the globe most densely painted in its first month are not silicon valley but Brazil and Germany. And you may have trouble getting a chance to paint pixels because its servers are overwhelmed. This weird global emergent collab happening feels like a hint of art from the future. — KK

Midjourney TV is a continuous stream of AI-generated short video art, created by the user community with Midjourney’s recently launched video model. The stream is a hypnotic, mind-expanding glimpse into how humans are using creative AI—and into the collective imagination. I’ve been a Midjourney user since day one and still prefer it for creating imagery from dreams and psychedelic therapy visions. — CD

My favorite current New Yorker cartoonist is Roz Chast. I love her whimsy, childlike drawing, inventiveness, and silly sweet humor. But she creates more than cartoons. On her Instagram page, she posts weird painted eggs she makes, her marvelous embroidered dreams, her arrangements of Japanese matchboxes, her block prints, her photographs of New York shops at night, and more. It’s the most refreshing definition of being creative. I get inspired every visit. — KK

Oliva Dodd goes to public parks with a folding table and a manual typewriter. She invites strangers to open up and tell her something personal about their lives. After a moment’s reflection, Dodd types a poem on a card, which she reads out loud to the person. As you can see on her Instagram, the recipients are sometimes moved to tears by the poignancy of the poems. — MF

As a photographer and artist, I’ve longed for this tool, which you can try out for free now. It’s pretty cool. Using Google’s experimental Gemini 2.0 Flash you can upload an image (photograph, painting, cartoon, etc.) and have the AI make very specific changes in the image while keeping the rest of the image intact. Usually you get very convincing edits that match the original image. Sort of like the world’s best photoshopping for free instantly. (You need to register with Google’s AI Studio > Image Generation to get this beta version. Choose Gemini 2.0 Flash (Image Generation) Experimental from the Model dropdown menu in the right column, and then use the + to upload an image, and then type your request.). — KK

I still regularly create AI imagery of my dreams using Midjourney, and I recently discovered Whisk, a Google lab tool for blending different visual elements into something entirely new. I just drag and drop the images, and I’m able to merge styles, subjects, and scenes. I can provide some visual guidance with text, but you don’t need to be an expert at writing prompts to have fun with it. It feels like a playground for creative visualization. — CD

I was tired of visiting multiple museum collections one-by-one for usable images, so I built this simple web tool that creates direct search links to 11 major institutional collections on a single page. Enter a search term like "sailing ships" and get one-click access to results from places like the Smithsonian, Met Museum, Library of Congress and more. Free. — MF

A cool way to make some unusual art is to render an image in Lego. I used a kit from BrickMe that turned a photo of my wife into 5,625 pixels, and then they supplied me with Lego tiles in 50 different colors. Using the map they also supply, I “painted” the image by applying the tiles in the manner of paint-by-numbers. I glued the final assembly onto plywood to hang in my studio. The procedure is well-designed, fun, with plenty of extra tiles. Mine was the small size at 24 x 24 inches (57 x 57 cm) for $126; they can go much bigger. – KK

I especially enjoyed The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss, a book that inspects the work processes of world-class artists. The artists range from painters, to poets, to musicians, screenwriters, comedians, photographers, and so on. Adam Moss is my favorite magazine editor; he gets the diverse artists to let him watch them work and through his firm questions best understand exactly how they create, including their detours, and mistakes along the way. The book is innovative in its layout and a work of art itself. — KK

The Public Domain Review website resurfaces forgotten visual treasures and literature. It’s one of my daily visits. Its online store offers museum-quality prints from their vast archive of historical art, illustrations, and curiosities. Check out this surreal 1892 illustration of meteor showers over Niagara Falls. — MF

An artist I follow on Instagram is Andy Thomas. He creates these very whimsical, hard to explain animations of fantasy shapes. He says he does not use AI. They appear to be half biological, half algorithmic creations and are unlike anything I’ve seen. I like their energy. — KK