Most graffiti artists never get the chance to paint a human figure measuring a staggering 100,000 square feet, but most of them aren’t working directly on massive mountainsides, either. Swiss artist Guillame Legros, better known as Saype, creates temporary scenes in the grass using a special biodegradable paint he developed himself after a year of experimentation. A paint gun helps him spay large quantities of pigment at a time onto grass cut extra short to make each work last as long as it can.

The rate of grass growth and the weather determine whether each ‘fresco,’ as Sayre calls them, lasts just a couple weeks or perhaps just over a month. The 2016 piece ‘Un Grand Homme,’ depicting a man in lederhosen lounging on an Alpine cliff in Leysin, Switzerland, broke world records for its size, while the 2018 piece ‘Present by Future’ created for the Eurockéennes Festival in Belfort, France is his most complex work yet.

“Fascinated by the philosophy and the questions which we could call ‘existential,’ his painting explores, most of the time, problems around the human being,” reads his bio. “His work is for him a way to share his vision of the world and invites us to wonder about our deep nature, our spirit, our place on earth and in the society.”

Take some of the most alien landscapes on our planet, illuminate them in unnatural ways with the help of drones and the resulting images look like they can’t possibly be real. You can gaze at photo after photo in Rueben Wu’s ‘Lux Noctis’ series with a skeptical eye, certain that there’s digital trickery involved, but the the fact is, the ability to fly bright lights over darkened scenes allows us to see them in a whole new way.

Some of the mountains have halos; others seem like they’re lit on a soundstage for a motion theater production. The angles of the light, with no source apparent in the images, almost lend the photographs a miniaturizing tilt-shift effect. Wu takes inspiration from “ideas of planetary exploration, 19th century sublime romantic painting, and science fiction” for the series of award-winning landscapes.

Wu uses a light by Fiilex mounted on a GPS-equipped 3DR Solo UAV to achieve these effects. You can follow him on Instagram @itsreuben to catch fresh works as they roll in.

“In my visual work, I am driven not just by the urge to create imagery, but by a desire to explore new places as if they were unknown territory, constantly open to serendipity and with an eye for the unnoticed and the hidden,” reads Wu’s website. “Photographs, like music, can create an echo of a time and a place. To me, my images are more than pictures. They are fragments of memory and imagination.”

Treating the Earth like a canvas and natural objects like rocks, sticks, sand and ice as art materials, we alter the natural environment to reflect ourselves and our own artistic impulses – even if only temporarily, until these works of land-based art are erased by nature itself.

Animated Land Art by Paul Johnson

For his ‘Earthworks in Motion’ series, artist Paul Johnson takes inspiration from such legendary land artists as Andy Goldsworthy and Jim Denevan, using some of the same techniques but crafting them into stop-motion animations filmed in parks and nature preserves around Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ash Dome by David Nash

In 1977, sculptor David Nash secretly planted and trained a circle of 22 ash trees to grow into a shape resembling a vortex on an area of land in Wales. 40 years later, they’ve grown enough for the shape to be discernible. Nash says that at the time, during the Cold War and other unrest, planting something that couldn’t be properly enjoyed until the 21st century seemed like a leap of faith.

Van Gogh’s ‘Olive Trees’ Planted in a Field

Vincent Van Goh’s masterpiece painting ‘Olive Trees,’ completed in 1889, comes to life – literally – in a Minneapolis field as artist Stan Herd uses nature as his canvas and paints. The piece was viewable from the air during autumn 2015 and then mowed down in concentric circles reminiscent of Van Gogh’s painting strokes.

Seven Magic Mountains by Ugo Rondinone

Each of Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s ‘Seven Magic Mountains’ made of stacked limestone stands between 30 and 35 feet tall painting in dayglo yellow, red, pink, silver and other colors. They’re set just south of Las Vegas as a monumental work of land art, installed in May 2016 and due to remain in place until May 2018, so there’s still time to see it in person.

Snow Murals by Simon Beck

Simon Beck uses snowshoes to manually imprint dazzling patterns and shapes into snowy fields, photographs them from above and then allows them to be blown away, covered by more snow or trampled. It can take up to 5,000 steps an hour for 10 hours at a time to complete an average piece.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
The Earth As A Canvas 25 Monumental Works Of Land Based Art