Sketching Beauty of Nature

Nature is my other passion. I never stop being fascinated at how amazingly God has created this world. Just look around you, every single leaf on a tree, every blade of grass and each flower is a piece of outstanding art. Nature is something worth spending hours to pour out the feelings evoked by that beauty on paper.

Have you ever noticed when staying in a city that our life is restrained by straight lines and regular shapes? We all walk along straight sidewalks, drive along straight roads, live in box-like apartments and look through rectangular windows. I think straight lines are something artificial and somewhat unnatural. When you leave the city and go away from smog and dust, cumbersome buildings and noisy traffic, yonder to fields and forests, rivers and mountains, you’ll have a chance to enjoy being in the wonderful realm of quite another shapes. This is where you let your soul feel real freedom of nature. Look at the trees and other vegetation around you. You are unlikely to see trees of the same shape. It seems that a tree chooses by its own in which direction to grow its branches. All that boundless abundance of shapes and colors makes me realize the awesome creative power of God who was so kind to have given me a piece of his creative mind and bestowed the drawing talent on me. And I draw… draw this nature, this masterpiece which our God has shaped so wisely.

When I had more free time, I used to drive my mountain bike far away from the city to contemplate nature and make some sketches. I used to keep on riding the bike till noticing something interesting then I stopped and commenced drawing. I always had my favorite drawing tools (a fountain pen and aquarelle pencils) at my finger tips. Nature is the best teacher for an artist since it is based on certain fundamental principles. Those principles are quite simple and embrace symmetry, hierarchical branching, equilibrium etc., but in spite of this simplicity those basic principles form a stunning, infinite variety of shapes. When learning those principles we make a step towards their Creator, although being tiny, this step leads us to comprehension of God’s wisdom surrounding us, and we all have honor to be a fruit of this almighty wisdom. I want to share with you a few my nature sketches which are very precious to me as they still store those pleasant memories of beautiful nature contemplation. I hope you will love them too.

I used to work as a graphic artist for archeological expeditions in Crimea. Crimea is a peninsula in my country – Ukraine (if you happen to know nothing about Ukraine, I can recommend visiting my friend's blog about Ukraine or search for information in the web). So Crimea is known for its very beautiful nature and here are a few nature drawings I made there.