Explore our selection of nature drawings for sale in our online gallery. Start your search by browsing our realistic nature drawings or illustrative nature drawings. Shop nature drawings today and discover our collection of contemporary artworks from international artists selected by our Curators.
We showcase nature drawings executed by talented artists from all over the world. Claire Cansick is a Norfolk-based artist whose fascination with nature leads her to produce stunning landscape pieces. Her works explore the flat, open vistas on her doorstep and are full of light, even when set in the middle of a forest. Her experimentation with line and colour in her work leads to stunning visual effects.
Renata Fernandez exemplifies the ways in which charcoal can be manipulated in order to create hyper realistic images and her incredible series of charcoal drawings depicting various tropical plants will amaze you.
The artwork of Nigel Bird, a British artist now based in France, takes inspiration from elements of the natural world. His abstract drawings use black pastel, charcoal, Indian ink and soot to create a remarkable number of tones, hues and textures.
History of Nature Drawings
Nature has been a prominent subject in the history of drawing. Some of the earliest illustrations which are still surviving today depict herbs and plants and were used to aid doctors and alchemists to record plants with medicinal properties.
With the rise of European Imperialism between the 18th and 19th centuries, the discovery of so many species new to science prompted a newfound desire to understand and systematically classify the natural world. This led to an inundation of drawings of natural history which ranged from plants to anatomical depictions of insects and animals.
The Hudson River School artists of 19th-century America were known for their landscape paintings of pristine wilderness. Many artists created pen and ink nature drawings as studies for their final paintings as well as to depict the scenery from various angles.
Landscapes and animals remain a popular subject for artists to explore to depict the natural world around them. Today, however, the genre of nature drawings exists not only for scientific purposes but has evolved to serve also for enjoyment and simple aesthetic pleasure.
Styles and Techniques in Nature Drawings
Some of the most popular media for nature drawings include pencil, charcoal, pen, and ink. Ink wash painting is a method which features heavily in the genre and dates back to the fifth century where it was a popular medium in China, Japan and Korea. Ink is layered in varying levels of concentration to create depth in the image. The ‘suiboku’ technique, which involves an abstract simplification of form, hails from Japan and is used primarily for landscape images.
Natural history drawings were created primarily for scientific study and thus the focus was upon conveying maximum accuracy of the subject, rather than upon achieving a visually pleasing effect in terms of aesthetics. It is not until more recently that nature drawings have been executed with the latter as their goal.
Notable Nature Drawing Artists
George Stubbs is well-known for his depictions of horses. His fascination with their anatomy is exemplified in his drawing entitled The Skeleton of a Horse (1766). Artist Albrect Dürer was fascinated with animals and plants discovered in foreign lands since the 15th and 16th centuries. His drawing Rhinoceros (1515) depicts an Indian rhinoceros that he drew based upon sketches and notes from Portuguese explorers.
Find out more in our Guide To Drawings.
