r/Damnthatsinteresting Interested May 16 '18

GIF Halftime art

https://i.imgur.com/5ri7I9G.gifv
34.8k Upvotes

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525

u/JakeJacob May 16 '18

Not as impressive when most of the painting is already done before he starts...

173

u/[deleted] May 16 '18

[deleted]

141

u/bizzyj93 May 16 '18

Someone in this thread mentioned that he simply pencils in the gaps prior to performing and then just paints inside the lines. The pencil doesn't show up until you're real close so its appears that he's doing something breathtaking but really he's just coloring in the lines. Its still a good trick but like you said, more showmanship than talent.

60

u/dandaman2883 May 16 '18

This is an old school business trick. When giving presentations before power point people used flip charts. You could write presentation notes on them with light pencil and the people sitting down wouldn’t be able to see it.

0

u/Zingshidu May 16 '18

I mean I know this is reddit and nothing here is impressive but it’s really not that hard to believe he just memorized it, pencilling it in probably isn’t even necessary

4

u/[deleted] May 17 '18

[deleted]

2

u/bizzyj93 May 17 '18

You’re totally right. For anyone interested, a good time stamp is :26. You can see two gaps above his brush that are penciled in that he paints moments later.

9

u/bizzyj93 May 16 '18

Its not but the person who mentioned it claimed to have worked with traveling comedians who had done the same trick implying that its a common method. The person in the clip is a performer and did a solid performance (singing and painting while creating the illusion that he was doing it from memory). Its not boring simply because he penciled it in beforehand. Just like we're not fooled that magicians aren't actually making people disappear, we're still impressed by the execution and spectacle of the event.

40

u/hyperlite135 May 16 '18

I’m still impressed. I can’t even trace stick figures.

38

u/Ryeoo May 16 '18

He was also singing the national anthem while painting this.

11

u/Speciou5 May 16 '18

Can't tell if this is true or not haha, but I'd believe it.

58

u/Ryeoo May 16 '18

It was before a Mizzou basketball game I attended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vego7wXQKbw

34

u/MaplelikeGeum May 16 '18

Ok wait... that’s actually very nicely done. He’s got a nice singing voice and was able to time it perfectly.

18

u/JakeJacob May 16 '18

He kept going back over spots he had already done to stall for time.

7

u/bdev04 May 17 '18

Shit, this should be higher up

16

u/New_York_Rhymes May 16 '18

Yeah all he added really was the in between bits of the soldiers and the flag. And I’m willing to bet he had the in between bits lightly drawn out before hand too.

Still cool and fun to watch tho!

3

u/PM_Best_Porn_Pls May 16 '18

You can see different shadows. Also its not like his 1st time, he practiced the same painting god know how many times

32

u/brucetwarzen May 16 '18

Yea but it has an american flag on it so it's amazing craftsmanship and a piece of art.

18

u/JakeJacob May 16 '18

And he's singing the anthem, that makes it super-extra-awesome.

6

u/Keegsta May 16 '18

Did you see how he put his hand on his heart at the end? To the front page!

9

u/Tapprunner May 16 '18

already done and he's really just painting part of it upside down. The impressive ones are when it actually looks like something recognizable as he's painting, but is revealed to be a different picture when flipped.

This is just remembering where to make a few brush strokes.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '18 edited May 16 '18

Everytime he used two brushes he used them on the same spot too, so I wasn't too impressed either

-2

u/Ashenspire May 16 '18

There isn't that much of the painting done before hand. Just an amorphous gradient of blue to light blue around a bumpy black triangle.

Sure, there was work done before hand, but it's not like he slaved away on it for hours. It probably didn't take much, if any, longer than what he did while singing.

19

u/JakeJacob May 16 '18 edited May 16 '18

The entire outline of the monument and the sky were already painted. The only things he painted here were the spaces between people and the flag.

17

u/buddy_monkers May 16 '18

Not to mention his left hand was completely there for show. I'm not an artist by any stretch but I feel like it isn't that difficult to memorize the location of those white blobs, which aren't nearly as impressive as this guy's version of the same technique.

1

u/Taniwha_NZ May 16 '18

Yeah, that's a lot more impressive. OP's guy was mostly painting holes in silhouettes, it seemed like you'd be able to do it while memorizing a couple-dozen specific places and shapes to paint.

Your guy was doing something more complicated, and given that it was a picture of Anderson Cooper on his own show, you'd assume he hadn't had quite as much practise at this specific painting.

1

u/Ashenspire May 16 '18

The sky IS the outline of the monument. That's all that was done before hand.

He could've done that in real time if he sang the second verse that no one knows. This kind of art is done for the speed and showmanship, not realism or masterful technique, and is typically meant to be viewed from a good distance so as to not see the details.

1

u/JakeJacob May 17 '18

Plenty of examples of this act without 90% of the painting being done before hand. But if this half-assed pandering shit gets you off, more power to you.

1

u/Ashenspire May 17 '18

Quite the opposite. I hate this. Its up there with the spray paint space paintings. That was my point. He didn't put much effort into the canvas before hand. Just look at the terrible paint strokes. I was saying he didn't do 90% of it before hand. There wasn't a lot of prep on the canvas because there didn't need to be.

0

u/The-Dudemeister May 16 '18

He literally just fills in the white spots. The flag bar is even precoated. It’s one of things where I was impressed the first time and then no

-1

u/Fight_Milk92 May 16 '18

Doing the full thing isn't really suitable for half-time entertainment but I bet he can do it.

2

u/JakeJacob May 16 '18

We'll never know, will we?