#Betho Speaks

[elizabethospeaks]

Whilst seeing Todd Howard's name put to anything with such prominence rightly inspires fear and mistrust, I can only hope that Chris Parnell delivers a suitably unhinged Vault Overseer and that the ghouls are hot 😔

[kaedwenistout]

if y’all think Red.ania is based on anything but the Holy Roman Empire I’m sorry, get well soon

[moosethren]

WHAT FORM WOULD YOUR DAEMON TAKE?  

Flightless bird

Your daemon would take the form of a flightless bird! Those who have flightless bird daemons are intelligent and precise, though unlike other bird daemons they march to the beat of their own drum. They tend to be socially peculiar, but use this to their advantage and find themselves as specialists in their own particular areas. Proceed to the flightless bird daemon quiz to find out which flightless bird your daemon's form will take!

Penguin

Your daemon would take the form of a penguin! You are an inquisitive and determined individual who works hard and plays hard. More so than others with flightless bird daemons, those with penguins are generous team players and dedicated to group cohesion. They are purposeful and upstanding, imbued with a tenacity that is certain to overcome all odds. When deciding on your daemon's appearance, consider your penguin's species. A large penguin daemon like the emperor penguin may indicate someone who is more dutiful and a leader, a smaller species like the Adélie penguin someone who is curious and a follower, and the macaroni and rockhopper penguins someone who is playful and clownish. Finally, give your daemon a name. Daemon names can be any length but are typically something unique. Play around with names and sounds until you find something that speaks to you!

tagging - @persephinae @earl-grey-hot @midnightmuffins @dravenxivuk @caffeinatedpigeon @eliza-betho @moonless-underdog @jocobai

[elizabethoarts]

An art progress I made with Aiden as the model; to hype myself up for all the hard work I've put in and progress i've made 😤

[elizabethospeaks]

Unpopular opinion but I think that we, as artists, writers etc, should make a concerted effort to support one another. Whilst social media numbers aren't supposed to be the focus of why we create art, there's no denying that it does matter to a lot of us, and it does affect our motivation to keep creating.

Whilst I understand The Misery around poor like-reblog ratios and feeling the need to make posts about it, if we don't make an effort to support each other by sharing the work of others, we're part of the problem

[elizabethospeaks]

Being An Artist needs a buddy system where a bigger stronger artist is alerted to me having my bi-monthly breakdown and they just pick me up and swing me like a ferret until I calm down

[elizabethospeaks]

On the same day I had to close the door on someone, an old friend from years ago got back in touch. A few weeks later, another very dear old friend came back into my life, and now we're talking again like no time has passed at all.

And idk it's just gotten me Thinking my Thoughts. About how the time and love we give to people is always a risk worth taking; even if they're not around for a while. It's just like sitting on a beach watching the sea; some waves will always come back.

Life is good to us sometimes; during a time where I felt my time and friendship and presence in peoples lives meant nothing, when I was really hurting, people I cared about came back fortuitously to prove me wrong. I'm very grateful this month~ ♡

[elizabethospeaks]

Ambling through the yorkshire dales with an old friend~

[elizabethospeaks]

Had to apologise to my roommate for laughing so loud at the Ghost Files premiere; blessed is the spooky season that brings the Ghoul Boys back 😭

[elizabethospeaks]

I am moving house! I need a fresh start. This blog will still be around as a personal blog, but my main activity Ie. Art, will be over at:

@elizabethoarts

[elizabethospeaks]

CW this is a huge ramble but this is a blogging platform so I’m just going to ADHD my thoughts everywhere

I've been thinking a lot about 'artistic talent' recently and what it means to me.

As a kid, I don't know; I wasn't what I'd call naturally gifted with art? Right from age 5 up to my early teens - I loved art, I drew constantly, I wanted so badly to be good at art. I grew up without a computer or art programs for the most part, partly because of how old I am and partly because we didn't have a lot of money. My parents could afford paper and cheap art materials, but that was about it - definitely no time or money for any kind of formal training.

There were kids in my first art classes with way better technical skills, better knowledge of anatomy and proportions, lighting etc etc. But I never got the impression they were as passionate about it as I was.

My first art teacher only seemed to have time for his male students that had those technical skills. I remember very vividly watching him enthuse over my male friends work, holding it up for the rest of the class to see - and me just sitting opposite him, drawing my heart out desperately, producing and producing and trying my best just desperately craving that same attention.

But he never had much time for me despite how obviously enthusiastic I was. Even when I assertively asked for his feedback, he was overly critical and just seemed frustrated by what I interpreted as this lack of innate talent some of my peers had. He never actually taught me much.

My disabilities held me back too - my undiagnosed ADHD made art tutorials I found online dull and difficult to follow. My perfectionism made creating even more frustrating (any other ADHDers with the irony of also being a perfectionist as you miss out glaring details as you’re rushing to finish something?). As online communities became more accessible I tried to join them and befriend other artists; but my skills were juvenile and frankly, I was super young and super annoying, so I didn’t get much of the creative community and feedback I craved a lot. When we did have a computer at home I could use, we couldn’t afford any digital art programs or tools, I just drew with a mouse in MSPaint and did so for a long long time. If I wanted to do lineart, eventually I started sketching on paper, scanning it in, and then painstakingly cleaned it up by erasing with a mouse so I could colour it.

I did befriend one artist eventually, who is still my friend today - she’s a little older than me and is incredibly technically talented. Her dad had art skills himself and taught her, and these days she’s won awards for her wildlife illustrations. She tried to help me and taught me more in one lesson on lighting and shading than my art teacher had done in 2 years. But comparison is the thief of joy and I just felt mournful comparing my art to hers. What was the point in trying to be an artist if I was never going to reach that level of skill?

Now I’m older I realise more where my friends skill came from. Her dad never had much time for her - but he would spend time with her and talk to her about her art. He was very overly critical to his own child and she so badly wanted to get his approval and spend time with him that she channelled absolutely everything into her art. But that never occurred to me when I was younger - I didn’t think about the lack of opportunities I’d had, or the circumstances of the artists I envied for being so much better than I was. I just felt so incredibly hopeless, disappointed and frustrated at myself.

Eventually that all stopped me from creating art entirely, for years. I just gave up. I didn’t start trying to create art again until very recently, a few years ago; after I finally managed to escape an abusive relationship and used my creative skills to help me work through what I now know was the beginning of my PTSD.

I guess the point of me writing this other than just wanting to purge my thoughts, is the hope that maybe somebody else might read this and see their own fraught experience with creating reflected in my own journey, and feel a little less alone. Sometimes it’s easy to think other creatives have a journey of sunshine and rainbows, but mine has been anything but.

I still struggle with a lot of these feelings - I still feel as though I’m lacking some magical spark of illusive 🌟tALEnt✨. It’s all been made worse by the many, many years where I just didn’t draw at all out of hopelessness and shame, and therefore fell even further behind where I feel I should be by now. But I managed to get that passion back and I use that to keep myself going; I remind myself all the time of how much I lost in those years where I just gave up. I constantly drive myself to improve and try to ignore how small my follower count and notes are. It’s still frustrating, still disheartening at times. But I’ve come so far and intend to keep going further ♥

[elizabethospeaks]

Btw I think I forgot to mention this on here, but I've been officially diagnosed with ADHD after many years and I'm very pleased 💖

[elizabethospeaks]

Guillermo Del Toro is like those posts about bears where people get very outraged about like, 'why does it look so friend shaped if not a friend?? Why can't I hug it??'

Guillermo has the sweetest face and gentle mannerisms. Absolute Friend Aura but you KNOW Horrors Beyond Your Imagining are in there somewhere. Anyway I'm rly enjoying Cabinet of Curiosities

[elizabethospeaks]

Art art art!

Finally got myself a poster of this gorgeous piece by @uselessmachine! Thank you for the gorgeous art making my walls look less mind numbingly dull ⭐🌛

Got a few of my own pieces around now, too. Aiden is on a huge empty wall by himself that I'm hoping to fill with prints and other things that cheer me up 🦊🧡

The Kherus and Narcyz chibis, of course, by @dravenxivuk

[elizabethospeaks]

Still completely baffles me when artists don’t respect the work of fellow artists

[elizabethospeaks]

Gods grant me strength to figure out how tf to install the Storyboard UI for TW3