Drawing While Tripping: How Do Psychedelics Affect Artistic Ability

Psychedelics have long been associated with the enhancement of creativity, particularly artistic creativity – in the form of drawing, painting, and music. The artwork of Alex Grey and the music of Shpongle are clear products of adventures in psychedelic mindscapes. Creating artwork is also a popular activity while tripping (during moments when one isn’t having a purely internal journey). But how does tripping affect artistic ability? Artists – be they well-known, professionals, or hobbyists – will know from personal experience if, how, or under what circumstances acute psychedelic effects worsen or improve certain aspects of the creative process. Fortunately, we have cases of artists who created artwork while under the influence of a psychedelic, which provides some insight into how this affects artistic ability.

Creating artwork on a psychedelic is not usually a high-dose activity. When taking higher doses of psychedelics, trying to create anything can seem out of the question: the perceptual, emotional, somatic, and spiritual effects may be far too engulfing to make drawing appealing (let alone possible). Consider, for instance, how strong doses of psychedelics can induce shaking (and sometimes quite intense shaking). It goes without saying that this state is not conducive to the skill of creating images with a pencil, pen, or paintbrush.

Visually, one’s field of vision may be teeming with geometric hallucinations, constantly shifting, which again is going to be pretty distracting if you’re trying to focus on a blank page and draw something on it. Moreover, one may be going through intense emotional states; experiencing metaphysical or personal insights; or losing one’s sense of identity, time, and space. One can’t expect to have much artistic ability in this state, if any at all.

People tend to engage in drawing while tripping if the dose is low-moderate (e.g. 25–150 ug of LSD or 0.5–2 g of psilocybin mushrooms). In these cases, assuming one’s sensitivity to psychedelics is average, it will be easier to draw or paint at various points in the trip. But this isn’t to say that, if one is artistically skilled, those skills will remain unaffected during a trip of light-medium intensity.

A psychedelic journey follows a pattern: come up, onset, peak, and comedown. During the come up and onset phases, depending on the compound, one may use drawing as a way to relax and occupy oneself as the effects take hold. However, some compounds induce nausea during the come up stage, so drawing may not be on one’s mind. If one did decide to draw during the come up and onset stages, I imagine that any nausea, nervousness, excitement, or initial psychedelic effects would distract oneself from the artistic task at hand.

On moderate doses of psychedelics, the peak of the trip can also occupy most of one’s attention. It is normal to want to get lost in the perceptual, emotional, and introspective effects – as well as the music one is listening to – rather than try to create the kind of artwork one normally creates when sober. And if one does decide to draw or paint during the peak, it may not be very focused or serious but instead may be more relaxed and loose. The outcome could be interesting and abstract – perhaps reflecting the psychedelic effects (e.g. visual patterns) one is experiencing – but it will be difficult to produce the kind of artwork made by a sober mind and steady hand. If one attempted a self-portrait, portrait, still life, or landscape drawing/painting, it would likely not turn out as ‘accurate’ (e.g. in proportion) as it would if one were sober.

I recently went to see some of Henri Michaux’s ‘Mescaline Drawings’, which the Franco-Belgian artist created in the 1950s and 1960s, based on four experiments with mescaline in the former decade. (These drawings are currently being displayed at the Courtauld Gallery in London until June; I highly recommend visiting the exhibition if you have the chance.) These drawings were not created while Michaux experienced the full effects of mescaline; he started drawing in the aftermath of his trips – in the hours or sometimes days following them.

Michaux’s aim was to use mescaline to gain better access to his unconscious mind and then recreate these unconscious outpourings. What we see is highly abstract: not the stereotypical psychedelic and kaleidoscopic designs of 60s psychedelia but seismographic-esque scribbles and zig-zags. I find Michaux’s ‘Mescaline Drawings’ to be highly pareidolic: I cannot help but see images emerge from the chaos. Jonathan Jones notes the same in his write-up of the exhibition for The Guardian. Michaux himself noted he saw faces in these drawings, and it is easy to see them too: the vague appearance of eyes, noses, and mouths. What one sees in these drawings can vary and shift. Some drawings give the appearance of an insect, sealife, writing, a spine-like structure, or a coastline. As Jones writes:

What is this wood of symbols? It could be vegetation, or arteries, or the brain’s neural network. As a surrealist Michaux was accustomed to seeing images in random marks. It’s a process that touches on how the brain works – and maybe mescaline intensifies it. As you gaze into these drawings, they seem to shape themselves into images, only for the images to slip away, mere phantoms of the mind.

While one may find, like Michaux, that it is difficult or impossible to draw during the ‘shock’ phase of a psychedelic trip, it may be easier and enjoyable to draw during the comedown phase, or when is experiencing some after-effects. This could be an opportunity to try to recreate, visualise, or symbolise what one experienced during the full effects of the drug. This post-peak or post-trip period of artistic activity can also be especially helpful to integration. The artwork can serve as a reminder of some important moments of the psychedelic experience. Psychedelic integration often depends on retrieval cues – things that help one retrieve memories of these sometimes difficult-to-remember experiences – and drawings or paintings can act as an effective reminder of what one experienced.

How we define ‘artistic ability’ matters when discussing whether acute psychedelic effects impact it or not. It is understandable that an artist’s ability to create clean lines, symmetry, proportion, detail, shading, realism, and contrast between light and shadow will be impacted while under the influence of a psychedelic. Nevertheless, one’s ability to create more novel, varied, abstract, or strange artwork could be enhanced by acute psychedelic effects.

As a case in point, during the 1950s, a researcher gave an artist two 50 ug doses of LSD, separated by about an hour. Andrew Sewell, a Yale Psychiatry professor, told Live Science:

I believe the pictures are from an experiment conducted by the psychiatrist Oscar Janiger starting in 1954 and continuing for seven years, during which time he gave LSD to over 100 professional artists and measured its effects on their artistic output and creative ability. Over 250 drawings and paintings were produced.

• 85 minutes later: “I can see you clearly, so clearly…. I’m having a little trouble controlling the pencil. It seems to want to keep going.”
• 2 hours and 30 minutes later: “Outlines seem normal, but very vivid – everything is changing colour…. I feel as if my consciousness is situated in the part of my body that’s now active – my hand, my elbow…”
• 2 hours and 32 minutes later: “The outlines of the model are normal, but now those of my drawing are not. The outline of my hand is going weird, too. It’s not a very good drawing, is it?”
• 2 hours and 35 minutes later: “I’ll do a drawing in one flourish … without stopping … one line, no break!”
• 2 hours and 45 minutes later: “I am … everything is … changed … they’re calling … your face … interwoven”. (At this point, the picture no long resembles a face.)
• 4 hours and 25 minutes later: “If I’m not careful, I’ll lose control of my movements”. The doctor observes the artist making the last half-dozen strokes while running back and forth across the room.
• 5 hours and 45 minutes later: “This pencil is mighty hard to hold.”
• 8 hours later (when the effects have worn off, except for the occasional distorting of faces): “I have nothing to say about this last drawing. It is bad and uninteresting. I want to go home now.”

It would be fascinating to see a return to this 1950s-style of psychedelic experimentation. What might the artists of today produce while under the influence of various psychedelics, at varying doses? How would psychedelics affect different art forms? Most modern psychedelic research is focused on therapeutic benefits, but how psychedelics impact creativity is worthy of consideration too, given how much value we place on this dimension of our lives.