Shintaro Kago Custom Portraits
Content warnings: For
this page: gore, body horror, eye trauma.
For Shintaro Kago's work in general: Explicit/extreme NSFW content,
extreme gore/guro/body horror, unsanitary, constantly pushes the
boundaries of good (or even bad) taste
---
Shintaro Kago is an artist that I respect a lot, but I will just be
blunt: he scares the *@$! out of me. I don't consider myself a fan of
his work, primarily because I'm too squeamish to read a lot of it -
however, he is an extremely interesting person with a Lot Of Work that
is... let's choose something positive and call it unique and creative. I
genuinely do have a huge amount of respect for artworks and artists that
can make me feel disgusted or other negative emotions, and he definitely
accomplishes that with his work. He's a boundary pusher for sure.
ANYWAY, this page is not a review or even a discussion of Kago's work -
I do not have the time nor the desire to approach that!! This a page
about one specific thing, and that is a certain page on his website. I
don't remember why I stumbled upon his website in the first place - it
might have even just been linked on his Wikipedia page, I'm not sure -
but the site itself is very old-looking and quite boring. (Link
here, gore warning.) The part that we care about for the purpose of
this write-up is that you - yes, you, or anyone else!! - can commission
him to draw a guro portrait of yourself getting killed or dismembered.
Okay, just let that sink in for a moment. Isn't that like the most
baller thing you've ever heard?? Like, that's an absolute power move,
right? On both accounts, tbh. Imagine being a guy that says "pay me $200
and I'll draw someone eating noodles out of your broken skull." Or being
the person that has a framed image in your home of your own eyeballs
spilling out of your face. I don't personally desire to have an
original Shintaro Kago guro drawing of myself, but like, if a horror
artist that I was a genuine fan of was doing this, I'd be
pretty frickin' tempted. I just really enjoy the whole concept of such a
transaction.
He has a handy cheatsheet right on the commission page, detailing the
fifty (!!) possible grotesque fates that can befall you, ranging from
having a cute cat drive your skull around like a car to having your face
zipped open like a costume. There really is quite a variety to choose
from here! (The one I blocked off is a particular eye trauma image I
can't look at, so I censored it lol.)
I don't technically know if these are still available, but the order
button still seems functional. It costs $200 USD for him to do a
watercolor portrait and send you a scan; if you want the physical work
itself, it'll be bumped up to $250. He has two examples on the
commission page itself, and if you poke around you can find a few that
people have posted on other sites.
Here
is the commission page itself!
Anyway, isn't that wild?? Idk, I just found it quite interesting and
wanted to have someone to talk about it! Mayhaps I'll talk about some of
his work in another post, I'm not sure... I'll have to be brave enough
to read more than two things he's made LOL.