Artist does 30 self-portraits, each one while under a different drug

I found this fascinating. I've only taken two or three of these, all under prescription.

In unrelated news, GW Bush paints paintings of 30 different world leaders. http://www.today.com/news/george-w-bushs-paintings-be-displayed-presidential-library-2D12172842

Very interesting, to say the least. Some of those portraits are pretty good; some are bizarre; and some are downright scary. Whatever floats your boat I suppose but I don't think I'd land myself in the hospital just to do a self-portrait - and I can't draw anyway :)

I find it peculiar that portrait #2 appears to contain a portion of a DC circuit complete with a voltage source, resistor and an open switch.

Neat. Now imagine if the coders of Moondust had released a different version for each different drug they tried.

And of course "we" need our own version: a different PWAD based (and made under the influence of) a different drug. Some (like "computer duster") must be quite affordable. I would go for cheap chinese glue myself.

Jeez he sure had a lot of hospital visits.
>those subsidized opiates and benzodiazepines

He also really should have done some tryptamines and ketamine and stayed away from inhaling solvents.

The edgy artistic license ruins it for me. He'd draw himself ten very different ways if he were given placebo, heh. The marijuana one is entirely stupid, like in Hollywood movies where smoking a blunt turns you into Bob Marley. The "real NOT FAKE!!!" absinthe and the hash one smell of bullshit as well, from what little drug experience I can use as a reference.

It probably has some artistic value I don't fully recognize (I'm a little obtuse in that department), but I clicked hoping for something that'd show a clear distinction between the substances. This feels like the author just dicking around. :/

dew said:

The edgy artistic license ruins it for me. He'd draw himself ten very different ways if he were given placebo, heh. The marijuana one is entirely stupid, like in Hollywood movies where smoking a blunt turns you into Bob Marley. The "real NOT FAKE!!!" absinthe and the hash one smell of bullshit as well, from what little drug experience I can use as a reference.

Yeah I kind of have to agree here for the most part. The salvia one and cough syrup (DXM) are the dead giveaways he's full of shit and the rest seem to be more or less stereotyped ideas of what he thinks one ought to draw while intoxicated on various substances.

The coke one is the only believable one imo. I knew more than a couple guys many years ago, loved to draw, also got into a bit of meth and their meth drawings look very similar to this. Very dark, surreal and abstract, lots of jagged lines and monotonous and unnecessary shading.

geo said:

In unrelated news, GW Bush paints paintings of 30 different world leaders. http://www.today.com/news/george-w-bushs-paintings-be-displayed-presidential-library-2D12172842

Pff, Bush ain't got shit on Ringo Star.

computer duster? orly?

That is so fucking fake.

darknation said:

computer duster? orly?

Yarly.

Well of course it's all a bunch of fluff, he's an artist trying to make a splash.

If you read between the lines there is some real truth to his drawings. For example 25I-NBOMe. You can't trip balls on stuff that is sold as fake LSD and expect to draw anything beyond palm trees and squiggles. And I would believe the DMT drawing. The trip: random squiggles vaguely forming a face. Post-trip: Faux-philosophy scribbles and fractals.

That absinthe version made me laugh, but can't shake the feeling these are just fakes of try hard fool who tries to convince he used drugs while painting/drawing these

Looks like shit, real or not.

Perhaps it's the ultimate case of Reality is Unrealistic? Ironically, applied to reality warping context...

Some of the stereotyped depictions could be also attributed to cultural bias/tropes followed by the author himself (e.g. he too, will have seen enough "Bob Marley Ganja-induced transformations" in Hollywood, like anyone else.

It's one of those things that are undecidable/unfalsifiable. Even if someone decides to do it "properly", he will just end up with different, uncomparable results. This is about the human psyche and creativity, not applied science.

I knew it was bull when I got to absinthe. I don't know much about drugs, but I know alcohol. Even "real" absinthe has such little psychoactive quantities that you'd die of plain old alcohol poisoning long before hallucinating. Anyone that says otherwise is repeating urban legends. Van Gogh went crazy from drinking paint, not booze.

Maes said:

It's one of those things that are undecidable/unfalsifiable. Even if someone decides to do it "properly", he will just end up with different, uncomparable results. This is about the human psyche and creativity, not applied science.

Yeah, this. I dunno why you guys are jumping to discredit it. It's an "experiment", but it clearly wasn't made with the intention to establish anything empirical. Some guy did some drugs and said "How do I feel like drawing myself today?". I'll take it with a grain of salt and suppose he did his job.

Edit: The more I look at it and look back to your responses, the less confidence I have in it lol. Backpedaling time!

I do maintain that there's at least a little bit of truth to it and that its a neat art project either way, but I really have no idea how much of it is real. Some responses here seem to affirm it, though.

Also this video the guy made is disturbing and funny at the same time, so that's kinda cool.

What the hell does he mean by "real" absinthe? Is he referring to the myth that "real" absinthe causes hallucinations or whatever the hell it's supposed to do, a myth created by the French wine industry to shut down competition? 'Cause quite frankly, if that's the case, to me, that more than anything is a dead giveaway that this moron doesn't even know what the hell he's talking about. It was a urban legend and nothign more. There was NEVER anything in absinthe beyond alcohol to cause an altered state of mind. Even allowing for the minute traces of other substances found in absinthe, that'd be like snorting ground up dollar bills to get high because of the trace amounts of cocaine many dollar bills contain.

Looks like a bunch of drawings each intentionally done in a different style, with a couple where he was legitimately too high to do much of anything.

That Bath Salts one reminds me of someone.

Scet said:

I knew it was bull when I got to absinthe.

Pretty much this. I have a bottle of "the real stuff" downstairs, and the worse it ever did was trigger some anxiety in me.

Also, the Zoloft seems a bit far-fetched, especially at 50mg, which isn't that high of a dose at all.

Scet said:

I knew it was bull when I got to absinthe. I don't know much about drugs, but I know alcohol. Even "real" absinthe has such little psychoactive quantities that you'd die of plain old alcohol poisoning long before hallucinating. Anyone that says otherwise is repeating urban legends. Van Gogh went crazy from drinking paint, not booze.

The picture he drew under absinthe also looks the plainest, though maybe a bit too plain for someone under booze. Maybe he wasn't experiencing much at that moment :)

Stygian said:

I find it peculiar that portrait #2 appears to contain a portion of a DC circuit complete with a voltage source, resistor and an open switch.

Then there's the Morse key in #9.

You're not here whilst on dmt or salvia. You'll be gone for about two minutes on salvia if taken properly and dmt you warp to the center of the universe for about 15 minutes. How he managed to paint on each is a bit out there.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks he was just totally milking it.

Flesh420 said:

You're not here whilst on dmt or salvia. You'll be gone for about two minutes on salvia if taken properly and dmt you warp to the center of the universe for about 15 minutes. How he managed to paint on each is a bit out there.

Did you see his DMT "during" and "after" pictures? The former is literally just an incomprehensible scribble. Same for the Heroin one.

Quite fascinating. Now we know which drugs to take when trying to be creative. And now, someone should try to do that while mapping.

You've got that right, and I may have already beat you to the punch on that one.

I really enjoyed the very last portrait and how microbial it was.

I should paint a self portrait of myself playing each map of Alien Vendetta, but they'd nearly all be the same orgasm face.

As for painting himself while on drugs: so? For decades, people have been trying to make it seem cool that they can't experience life without having to take drugs.