Bryan Lewis Saunders Portraits on drugs.

Bryan Lewis Saunders is an artist who decided to document his mind changes on drugs, through self portraits. Its incredibly interesting to see how his images go from lucid stuff, to nightmarish, and sometimes quite badly drawn. (1) The reason he did it was so that he could see how his perception of himself changed, while his surroundings did too. However he did apparently, within a few weeks, suffer from temporary brain damage and often found himself tired and lethargic. The reason I am looking into Bryan Saunders's work, is because mental health can be strongly linked to drug abuse or abuse of certain substances. This part of my project explores how people's perceptions on themselves change when they take different things. I find it all incredibly interesting and I admire his determination. There was a lot more portraits he did but I only picked the most shocking ones ( a lot he did in hospital on morphine) How the mind changes its outlook in exposure to certain situations or substances, or even emotions. He completed 30 portraits all together. 

"A lot of his portraits reflect (2) anxiety, loss of identity and darkness"

I will analyse each picture or a short period of time and see what and how his emotions are conveyed through visual stimuli. 

(1) Absinth - very minimalist. Not many details.
Alcohol. Very small eyes, could suggest small from squinting or crying. Ears are not exactly level - perhaps his hand wasn't steady? 

(1) Adderall ( getting weirder....a snake with his face on...) ADHD medication. The snake could suggest he feels hes moving very quickly or slyly. Behaving suspiciously? The face looks very pleased with himself/ 

(1) Alcohol - very messy and scribbled. I can clearly see this being someone's mind while they're drunk. like his mind is all over the place 

(1) Ambien. Sedative for insomnia.  - he looks tired in this picture. Like hes trying to keep his eyes open for a really long time and they're bulging cos they are so sore. His face shape has gone a little askew as well

(1) Ativan - anxiety medication. He's biting his lip,which could portray nervousness? His beanie hat could be him hiding his hair, and the multi colors could suggest he feels like hes in the spotlight a lot when he doesn't want to be, as his skin is so bright.  otherwise all in proportion (left eye just a little higher up than it should be) 

(1) Bath salts (now this one is really disturbing!!) This one is just frightening. Nightmarish creature that's head is deformed and his mouth is open in a gleeful horrible grin. He could be showing he feels he's losing who he is. 

(1) Buspar (very yellow.....his expression is getting more dreamy) anxiety medication again. He looks peaceful and tired. like hes just got into bed at the end of a very long day. He looks so so so tired!

(1) Butane honey oil - peaceful imagery and colours. he looks happy.  weed in a jar basically. A solvent. He has a machine for Morse code inside his head so that could suggest he feels he feels calm enough to take the time to communicate with people, not rush anything. Very mellow colours. Peaceful scene overall. 

(1) Cocaine - very scary aggressive imagery. Hard pencil strokes too. lots of teeth and no eyes - worrying imagery.  The multiple line scribbles look almost like the repetitive numbers scratched into ell walls in a jail cell.  Very grim. 

(1) computer duster - why? This barely represents a face. Very thin, stick lines that don't really fit together. I can't really see the face in this at all.  I get the feeling he wasn't sound of mind when he drew this, at all!

(1) Crystal Meth - scary. very thick sloppily applied paint strokes. Wide angry staring eyes. Lots of pink and red which suggest anger to me. 

(1) Weed - happy colorful imagery. very sweet image. almost childlike in its naivety. nice bold lines, so hes more mentally together for this one, than the last few. 

(1) Heroine - its just lines! Again he obviously wasn't focused enough to draw a proper self portrait. This is a rather abstract face - i can just about see it. 

(1) Huffing gas - very picasso-y. I really like how he did the background, but he seems to have gone more geometric for this one. I have no idea what that square thing is on his head, but he seems to be favoring triangles in this picture. It looks like an abstract version of him, so at least it still looks like what its meant to.

(1) LSD - frightening, dark eyes and lots of colors that don't go well together. The colors are almost clownish. Hes got all that color splaying out from his head-  perhaps that could be psychedelic waves? or raw emotions? no idea. I really don't like this one. 

(1) Opium - very Salvador Dali. Shapes where there shouldn't be and lots of detail in weird places. With the ruff he's drawn on himself, he looks like hes drawing himself as a high class member of society. perhaps a lord or something. He looks quite aloof. Clean pencil lines, and determined ones too - he knew exactly what he wanted to draw. 

(1)Ritalin (very well done, however he looks angry in a way- a bit expressionless)  He doesn't look all there. His media is a bit more experimental than the others as it has way more variation in colors in it.  perspective and proportions are precise too.

(1) PCP - anesthetic. Very minimalist - faint delicate lines. This one is interesting because he decided to focus on the whole of his body, not just the bust and face. Hes drawn feet and his glasses off. could the fallen glasses symbolize he feels he has trouble seeing where hes going? problems with direction? Its very faint and scratchy, and all determination and deliberateness shown and applied in his previous ones has vanished.

(1) mushrooms. (certainly the most entertaining out of all his portraits) its like a cartoon come to life. Its almost intimidating the way he's leaning forward. He's drawn himself in a very eager, or a very aggressive way - coming at you with a berserk grin on his face.  The lines of dots coming off his face is very interesting....could they be thoughts buzzing around his head manically? the eyes are very bright and scary.

Other artist on drugs: Brian Pollett Pixel-pusha

He created a series of illustrations to show the effects of drugs (it says in the corner of each picture which drug it is)

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I have two ideas to research further into this type of illusration:

I could try and recreate self portraits everyday for each drug listed and how i would see myself (without taking them of course)

or

I could come up with several graphic illustrations of sorts, but each one has to show how each mental illness I picked for my FMP works. So taking Brian Pollett's ideas but using mental health problems as the subject, not drugs. So I could do shapes and feelings conveyed through color and form. 

I like the second one. I will work more into this idea either tomorrow or next week

So far this part of the project has told me how fascinating it is to look into visual representations of the mind; both self reflection and looking at it from a third party view. Now it's my turn to explore this. 

Anxiety - a hurricane of thoughts and worries -feeling of confrontation (Arrows) and dark stormy thought. Scribbles represent a flurry of thoughts and worries. 

Depression idea - shaped hike a brain intentionally to show mindset. The worm represents how depression starts as a little emotion or thought that worms its way into your head, and then feels like its looming over you, threatening and dark. The silhouette is bad...could have more work into it, but the smashed glass effect on the background really adds to the look, I feel. I really love this design. I think its very effective. The blank background is intentional - its meant to feel empty - like the suffer feels isolated and untouchable.  

Bipolar - two opposing faces in the mind's eye. eyes are the window to the soul ect. The pulse lines play as two part - one as a heartbeat monitor- to show the ups and downs of bipolar, and the other as veins in the eye. Feeling the emptiness of space. Feeling isolated - in their own little world. 

Tourettes - the large mouth symbolizes that people with tourettes - their mouth's speak separate of their brains in a way - like they have a life of their own  The fact that they are just mouths with no other features is my way of showing that their voices and mouth's dominate their lives. The two heads are symbolizing one head moving - to show that tourettes is also movements, not just words.   

Autism - This picture represents how autistic people  stand out in a crowd. The lock on his face is to show how autistic people think about things differently from other people - unlocking other roads of thoughts and actions.  - the aura around him is to show his personal bubble; like how autistic people don't like to be touched.  They are all similar - neuro-typical people that think alike,whereas hes' not afraid to say what he's thinking. which is a bad trait in certain respects. The writing in the background is to symbolize how people talk about people with special needs as if they're not there, and behind their backs. The arms crossed show how isolated he feels and how he's trying to protect himself (body language - crossed arms generally means someone is feeling vulnerable.)  He's also standing away from everyone else. because autistic people find it hard to make friends. The reason hes multi colored is to show the autistic spectrum. 

ADHD - This is to suggest the amount of movement included in ADHD - the fact that people with ADHD tend to just come out with things before thinking about it first. The amount of hands symbolize movement and doing several things at once. The pills are self explanatory.  The brain very much controls everything they say and do ,so I did it as an anthropomorphic character

REFERENCES FOR PORTRAITS ON DRUGS

 (1)http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/
(2)http://www.theplaidzebra.com/this-artist-drew-self-portraits-on-50-different-drugs-photos/
(3)http://www.boredpanda.com/how-different-drugs-affect-you-artist-illustrations-art-brian-pollett/

Textures from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/