Just me and my thoughts

1. i didn’t

I’m joking. Don’t worry. A terrible mix of anxiety, procastination, perfectionism (especially towards things i care about) has always made it LITERALLY impossible to finish a sketchbook. And you know everyone says “practice practice practice” and it’s 100% true but it’s difficult and frustrating when you just can’t. finish. a sketchbook.

Now to the terrible -trust me- terrible steps of how i achieved such thing (without using daily challenges, which can be counter productive if you skip even a day, for me) :

you know those like.. pretty pretty stationery sketchbooks that feel like sO INSPIRING AND PRETTY AND SLJSKSK y'know? Avoid them. Completly. In the end, for me, they put already an expectation on how good the inside should have been. i picked an old school notebook with a dumb cover and literal squared paper.

Skip the first page. Or like, ruin it completly. i know I KNOW it’s difficult and bad and it feels like sO WRONG but do it DO IT

Actually, when you don’t know how to finish a page or how to do a page so that it is ‘as pretty’ as the previous one, skip it. You can ALWAYS come back to it.

Use any media you want you have to reach the point of not cARING. now y'all will kill me but i use actual watercolors (the cheapest ones of course) on that notebook. It looks terrible til it dries and again feels so so wrong. BUT AT LEAST i made a watercolor drawing, where usually i would have just half done it because i felt like i was ruining a pretty page or a pretty sketchbook

Do not be afraid of errors. Cut some paper (or anything really) and just stick it on the thing you don’t like. drawing it again can’t do you bad (if you’re in the mood)

MIX MEDIA

Obsessed with something lately? DRAW/WRITE IT! doing a research for some art/writing thing? PUT THAT IN THE NOTEBOOK TOO! just seeing a lot of completed pages will make u feel a little more motivated

at the same time, do not be afraid of putting it aside for long. don’t be the me that used to say “oh i haven’t drawn in this for so long….. now my drawings will be so different….. it’ll look so bad in one place….” no. YOU GOTTA draw in that

Same goes for the medium you’re using. “oh i have done a lot of pencils… i can’t possibly put in there a markers drawing….” YOU CAN. DO IT

Thank you for coming to my ted talk i’m done now

gO DRAW

ITS TIME

And it honestly looks like Aragorn is not only comfortable with this kind of physical affection, he’s used to it. 

Which makes me think that instead of looking at young Aragorn, and asking him to be more like an elf to fit in with those around them. Elrond looked at this kid and and thought to himself “how can I be more like what this child needs to thrive” 

Aragorn has been raised by Elves since he was only 2 years old. So if we’re going by Piaget’s theories of child development, that puts Aragorn, (who would have been called Estel at the time) in the pre-operational stage. Or somewhere thereabouts. So Elrond is raising this kid when he’s learning to talk. When he’s constantly asking “why?” about everything. 

Young Estel would have grown up surrounded by elves and elf children and just by virtue of not being an elf, he probably would have had to deal with feeling less capable than those around him. He wouldn’t have been able to do things like run across snow, and didn’t have the ability to see as far as they did with their “elf eyes” and I am imagining all manner of bruises and skinned knees as he tries to keep up anyway. 

And it would take some getting used to his new surrounding, but  I can’t stop picturing the first time tiny little Estel runs full tilt across the room and hugs Elrond’s leg. 

And instead of scolding him or asking him to be more like an elf to fit in, Elrond consciously sets aside his own discomfort in the face of what this child needs to thrive. And if what Estel needs is hugs, then hugs he shall have. 

Elrond picking up itty bitty Aragorn in a great big hug, and being just as uncomfortable about it, but hiding it well because this child was entrusted to his care and he will not let the boy grow up feeling unwanted or unloved.

And so Aragorn grew up surrounded by elves, but he grew up to be someone who naturally and unselfconsciously displays affection. 

I think that speaks volumes about Elrond. 

He raised this kid from age 2 to age 20 (so the majority of his formative years and well through his teens) and it was around then that Elrond’s own daughter gets back form visiting her grandmother Galadriel and meets this boy for the first time.

So I have NO IDEA what the various stages of child development would be for an elf, but I doubt their exactly the same.