This famous set of nine portraits shows how one artist’s drawings of the same person changed over about eight hours after taking LSD. The pictures start as a recognisable charcoal sketch, dissolve into jagged lines and abstract patterns at the peak of the experience, and slowly return to something close to normal as the drug wears off.
The sequence is usually traced to the 1950s, when LSD was still a legal research drug and psychiatrists were curious about its effects on perception and creativity. According to the version that has circulated for years, the artist received two doses of 50 micrograms about an hour apart, was given a box of art materials and asked to draw the doctor in the room, while observers noted what he said and did. The drawings are often linked to the Los Angeles psychiatrist Oscar Janiger, but that link is a belief rather than a documented fact, and the artist has never been identified.
Read the captions below as a historical curiosity, not a guide. LSD is illegal in most countries, and its effects are unpredictable.
The first two portraits: before the drug takes hold
Portrait 1: twenty minutes after the first 50 µg dose
The first drawing, done in charcoal, is a conventional head-and-shoulders study of the doctor. The notes say the artist felt entirely normal at this point and reported no effect yet. It is the baseline against which every later picture can be compared.
Portrait 2: 85 minutes in, shortly after a second 50 µg dose
By now the observers described the artist as euphoric. He said he could see the model with unusual clarity but was struggling to control his pencil, which seemed to want to keep moving on its own. The lines are bolder and looser, though the face is still recognisable.
The peak: two and a half hours in
Portrait 3: two hours and thirty minutes
The artist became intensely absorbed in drawing and reported that colours seemed to be shifting while outlines stayed vivid. He described feeling as if his awareness had moved into whichever part of his body was working, such as his hand or elbow. The portrait becomes a set of sweeping strokes rather than a careful likeness.
Portrait 4: two hours and thirty-two minutes
Only two minutes later he started again, now noticing that the model looked normal but his own lines, and even his own hand, did not. He judged the result poor and gave up on it. The image shows the gap opening between what he saw and what reached the paper.
Portrait 5: two hours and thirty-five minutes
Determined to try something different, he set out to complete a drawing in one continuous line without lifting the pencil. After finishing he laughed, then seemed startled by something on the floor, a sign of the perceptual distortions typical of a strong dose.
Losing words, changing media
Portrait 6: two hours and forty-five minutes
This is the most chaotic stage of the session. The notes describe the artist as agitated, trying to climb into the art supplies box and barely able to speak in full sentences; he hummed a tune the observers thought was “Thanks for the Memory.” He switched to tempera paint, and the portrait breaks into bright, almost abstract shapes.
Portrait 7: four hours and twenty-five minutes
After about two hours lying on a bunk and waving his hands in the air, he returned to the table suddenly and picked up pen and watercolour. He announced that this would be his best drawing yet and insisted, “I know. I know,” repeating it many times. He finished the last strokes while running back and forth across the room.
Coming down: the last two portraits
Portrait 8: five hours and forty-five minutes
The artist spent around ninety minutes moving restlessly about before settling to draw again. He said he could feel his knees once more and thought the effects were fading, and he complained that his pencil was hard to hold, although it was actually a crayon. The face is returning to a recognisable form.
Portrait 9: eight hours after the first dose
By the end he reported that the intoxication had passed, apart from occasional distortions in the observers’ faces. Asked for one last drawing, he produced it without enthusiasm, dismissed it as bad and uninteresting and said he wanted to go home. The final portrait is plain and sketchy, a quiet bookend to the first.
Who was behind the experiment?
Oscar Janiger (1918–2001) was a psychiatrist in private practice in Los Angeles who also taught at the University of California, Irvine. Between 1954 and 1962 he gave LSD, obtained legally from the Swiss firm Sandoz, to around 900 volunteers, including students, professionals and celebrities, and recorded their experiences. A part of that work focused on artists: about 100 painters took the drug and produced roughly 250 paintings and drawings.
The art historian Carl Hertel, who analysed those works in 1971, concluded that they were neither better nor worse than the artists’ usual output, but tended to be brighter, more abstract and to fill the whole canvas. Janiger stopped in 1962 as US authorities began scrutinising LSD research, and the drug was made illegal in the United States in the mid-1960s. Because he published little at the time, his work became better known only later, including through a book he co-wrote with Marlene Dobkin de Rios, LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process, published in 2003.
The nine portraits themselves remain uncertain. The Yale psychiatrist Andrew Sewell said he believed they came from Janiger’s project, and that is how they are usually presented, but no published record confirms the artist, the doctor or the exact setting. The suggestion that this was a US government experiment, sometimes added to online versions, is not supported by any source we could find.
Why the drawings change, and why caution matters
LSD acts mainly on serotonin 2A receptors in the brain, altering how sensory information is filtered and combined. People commonly report shifting colours, moving patterns, distorted shapes and a changed sense of their own body, all of which can be seen in the sequence above. Hand-eye coordination and the ability to finish a task also suffer, which helps explain why the middle portraits look rushed and fragmented rather than more creative.
Modern clinical research on psychedelics takes place under strict medical supervision, with screening and support. Outside that setting, LSD can cause frightening experiences, risky behaviour and, in some people, lasting mental health problems. Anyone worried about their own or someone else’s drug use should talk to a doctor.
Sources: Open Culture: Artist draws 9 portraits on LSD during 1950s research experiment (May 2024); Wikipedia: Oscar Janiger; Bored Panda: drawings under the influence (original post). Drawings: unidentified artist, 1950s; image set shared on Imgur by user juraganyeri.
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