If you aren’t getting the right answer, you might be asking the wrong questions
*This has nothing to do with sex toys
Hello my friends,
Spoiler alert: this post is about how my landscape sketches evolved over a four-week period. And, as I said above, NOT about sex toys.*
The optional May project for my painting group was to create a “landscape sketch where you have been expressive with your line work.”
Easy?
You would think…
I went outside and started sketching and overthinking in equal amounts. (Ok, perhaps overthinking had the edge.)
Head buzzed with questions: What is my style? What qualifies as expressive? What will the other members consider “good”?
I became a deer in headlights. What do I draw? How do I draw it?
I tried line only, shading, realistic, whimsical. None were wrong—every drawing style is valid. But not one of my sketches felt like me.
My stack of “I don’t really like it” sketches grew to a height measurable in inches. I became more obsessed—and more frustrated. One day I would decide it was useless and that it was time to give up. The next I felt determined to get it “right.”
The project deadline arrived. I submitted something I wasn’t satisfied with.
A week or so later, I decided to try again.
I went out sketching…
When I got back home, I spread the sketches out on the floor. They were ok, but still not me.
That’s when Intuition reached her breaking point. Departing from her normally very polite demeanor, she shoved my Head out of her way. She emitted a huge sigh, then asked:
What motions and marks feel most natural?
What would make this fun?
Do you even care if your sketches are recognizable as landscapes?
Suddenly, I was free. Intuition sprinted forward, leaving my Head behind.
I picked up a brush and sloshed some water on top of the sketches. I scribbled with pastels. I smeared charcoal over the top.
Finally… PROGRESS!
I felt like a cartoon mad scientist mixing a potion in her lab: free, gleeful, a little reckless.
The way I want to feel when I make art.
The result? A set of sketches that even my Head was pleased with.
Sometimes you can’t think your way there. You have to feel it.*
This doesn’t mean that I have things all figured out. Art, like life, shifts—but never gets any easier.
Head has already resumed her old tricks. ☹️
But for today, I’ll take the win.
*About having nothing to do with sex toys:
I may be overthinking this but…
I originally drafted the last line of my post as “Feel your way.” But then I took it out because it reminded me of the lyric “Feel your way,” from the song “You’re the One that I Want” from the movie Grease.
Newly hot and very sex-positive Olivia Newton John sings this “You’re the One that I Want” to Jonh Travolta at the end of the movie. It’s part of a scene celebrating that Newton John’s character, Sandy, can finally be happy because she has saved her relationship–by transforming herself into a sex toy.
When she sings the lyric, “feel your way” she is implying exactly what it sounds like she’s implying…
I have loved that movie since I was in the ninth grade, but the sex toy thing is definitely not my message here.
And while you may not have made that connection, I did, so I couldn’t be sure that you wouldn’t.
Which meant that line had to go.
I repeat that this is in no way a judgement about the movie Grease. Even if, from my current perspective as a 60-something year old woman living in 2026, I feel that some of the messages in “Grease” propagate the patriarchy.
Please note that I am NOT a fan of the patriarchy and that my post has nothing to do with women changing themselves for men—nor sex toys.
Thank you for understanding.
-Lisa