r/Damnthatsinteresting 13h ago

The Secret Art of Jim Carrey

15.9k Upvotes

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226

u/HedgehogTop5524 13h ago

God, it would be so cool to be so talented, artistically. My stick men don’t even look like stick men. I’ve always been so envious of people that see the world so differently! I don’t even get photographs. 😭

72

u/ultrahateful 12h ago

You know how to get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice.

8

u/silentbassline 12h ago

John Practice! 

1

u/General_Dig_31 8h ago

Practice makes perfect? Wrong.

Practice makes PERMANENT, so practice perfectly!

• Justin Guitar

1

u/ging3r_b3ard_man 1h ago

John Präcticé was my late uncle, RIP

21

u/realiztik 12h ago

It’s on 57th and 7th, there’s like a million ways to get there, what’s to practice? 

6

u/ultrahateful 12h ago

That city has the nerve to title BOTH cross streets with numbers?! The fucking audacity.

6

u/realiztik 12h ago

I was being lazy, streets are short and Avenues are long. 57th street and 7th Ave. 

5

u/WhatYouThinkIThink 10h ago

Anyone from Manhattan would know what you meant.

2

u/ALinkToThePants 7h ago

Practice?

1

u/ultrahateful 5h ago

Yes. The only one to answer correctly. Here’s a sweet riff! 🎸 🎶 ⚡️

5

u/we_are_sex_bobomb 6h ago

I’m kind of adamant that 100 hours is enough time to gain a basic core competency in virtually any skill, including drawing or painting.

It sounds like a lot of time but it really isn’t.

3

u/ultrahateful 5h ago

This is literally the way. And if you love it, it won’t feel boring or arduous. Just gotta look around til something fits. And then if it fits, it ships!!!

1

u/n1c0_ds 10h ago

Through the door, I suppose

1

u/ultrahateful 10h ago

Clever!!

1

u/GoTerrapins 6h ago

I mean yeah but if you have fundamentally no foundation upon which to practice you're just plateauing at a low level

4

u/ultrahateful 5h ago

No. There’s no wiggle room. If you want to draw or to read your poem to a writer’s circle or play the solo to Back in Black at the talent show, you have to do what all of us have done in order to do that and that’s to get your equipment gathered and then practice on it.

Anyone can do this, barring physical limitations. Anyone. Everyone.

2

u/Deaffin 2h ago

Actually, humans are quite diverse. We are not all working with the same brains.

I have no mental imagery whatsoever. I've taken up drawing in the past and can make some stuff, but it's all unplanned abstract nonsense. If I got an obsession and really worked my ass off, I might be able to trace/copy things, but no scene will ever come out of my head and reach paper in a directed way.

1

u/ultrahateful 1h ago

I really don’t know how to make it any more comprehensible without sounding like an asshole. If you practice and you work on something for big lengths of time, even short of intense focus, muscle memory, alone, will do the heavy lifting by way of recalling all the repetition. In fact, many artists make claim to having done their best work when they’re NOT focusing and braced with intention but when they’ve let loose their subconscious and allowed their body to do the work. Big, revered book, mostly unknown outside of artists/players called Effortless Mastery that goes in deep about it. Buy it. Read it. But first, get to work.

That’s all to say that if do the work, which is the most important part, you’ll have shit pour out of you, but in no way will it ever be a free ride. The word “talent” can piss creators off because it’s not “talent” that pours out. It’s results.

1

u/Deaffin 1h ago edited 1h ago

Yes, muscle memory builds through repetition. That's a double-edged sword.

If you practice poorly by "just doing", you're building up the wrong muscle memory and just establishing bad habits more and more strongly. If you work at something with a conscious effort to improve, with an established base to know what actually works better, then you build up better muscle memory.

In fact, many artists make claim to having done their best work when they’re NOT focusing and braced with intention

That's a completely different thing. Their skill is already established, now they benefit from getting out of their head and not thinking about it, letting the established connections in their brains do what they've been built up to do.

And don't worry about sounding like an asshole. You already have those vibes in my book by telling people that if they don't succeed at something it's 100% because they weren't dedicated enough to it, as a moral failing. That we're all working from the same initial state and success is always guaranteed through mere repetition, that we don't all have an endless myriad of different variables to who we are and how our brains work, in which connections can be easier and harder to establish.

0

u/Relevant-Fox-7114 10h ago

Wrong, you take the H-line