Drugged artist paints 8600 self-portraits

Don't take these as being accurate portraits of What A Particular Drug Does To You. My experience, as an artist who has dabbled in recreational chemistry, is that you can get a multitude of stylistic effects from a single drug, let alone many different ones.

For instance, THC will SOMETIMES give me a huge boost to my visualization powers, and I can hold enough in my mind at once that I feel like I'm tracing the image instead of drawing it. This doesn't happen all the time, or for the duration of the entire trip. It doesn't even always happen with the same strain.

YMMV, of course. But that's my experience of (far fewer than this guy has done) drugs plus art

Lots more of his photos here:

http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/

Also, it's worth noting that only a small # of his portraits were painted while "under the influence" (though it sounds as if many were done while medicated).

Though I have experience with but a small fraction of his ... influences? ... his portraits definitely capture bits of the experiences I've shared. Clever.

Setting aside the artistically productive alcoholics and addicts, I assume that this is not the first artist to have intentionally dosed themselves for artistic purposes. Does anyone know of others?

This is nothing new. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, also known as Witkacy, was painting portraits of himself and friends under influence of drugs in mid-War Poland. He was actually making a living of it through his Portrayal Company (while at the same time writing ingenious prosaic, poetical and drama works that would make him famous), though most of the bespoke portraits were not drug-influenced, the so-called Type C being reserved for friends and acquaintances and created mostly during parties. Some of these portraits contained cryptic inscriptions next to the author's signature, indicating the influencing substances.

More on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ignacy_Witkiewic...

A sample portrait (with an inscription hinting at alcohol and/or heroin): http://www.pinakoteka.zascianek.pl/Witkacy/Images/Nena_Stach...

More assorted portraits: http://images.google.pl/search?tbm=isch&source=hp&bi...

Who cares if it's been done before? These are fantastic.

I especially like the DMT one - it's impossible to put an experience like that into words, so he does a fantastic job with the diagram of the head and the orbs and "10x more complex"

I find it a shame he's associating various, really clever artistic stlyes, techniques amd works with particular chemicals he's ingested/consumed.

It cheapens his art and is making false equivalences.

fascinating to see this, almost, diary of drug taking. It's incredible how much his style changes from drug to drug.