Artists Make Portraits and Figures From Bamboo, Driftwood, Pebbles, Rice and Sand (10 Photos)

October 30, 2026

By Vidar

Bamboo, pebbles, rice and earth

Every artwork in this collection is made from natural material: bamboo, driftwood, beach pebbles, sand, growing rice or earth pigments. Many are gone with the next tide, the next harvest or the next desert wind.

More: Sculptures That Blend With Nature

🪨 “George Washingstone” — By Justin Bateman in Thailand 🇹🇭

Up close it is a patch of gravel. From a few steps back, the white wig, the face and the dark coat of George Washington appear, sorted entirely by the color of each stone.

💡 Stone Fact: Bateman, a British artist based in Chiang Mai, writes that pebbles are his pixels. “My work is impermanent, I leave only footprints,” he says, as quoted by My Modern Met.

More: Justin Bateman’s Pebble Portraits

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🎋 “Stillness in Motion” — By Olga Ziemska in Daejeon, South Korea 🇰🇷

Seen from the front, it is a person standing still. From the side, long bamboo canes stream back from the head to the grass, as if the figure were walking into a strong wind. The children give the scale: it is taller than they are. Ziemska showed it in Daejeon in 2012.

💡 Name Fact: The piece belongs to Ziemska’s Stillness in Motion: The Matka Series. Matka is Polish for mother, which she links to our first environment, the womb.

More: Back to Nature (9 Photos)

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🪵 Driftwood Figure — By Nagato Iwasaki

A tall figure stands at the water’s edge, its legs and torso built from many pieces of weathered driftwood. The wood still looks like wood, but the posture is unmistakably human.

💡 Wood Fact: The figures belong to Iwasaki’s Torso series, which he began in 1995. “Gathering bits of wood from here and there, like an insect building a nest, I create sculptures,” he told Spoon & Tamago.

More: Driftwood Sculptures by Nagato Iwasaki

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😊 “Mandela Mandala” — By Justin Bateman in Chiang Mai, Thailand 🇹🇭

Nelson Mandela’s smile is built from found stones, sorted from pale tan to almost black. Bateman lists it as an impermanent work made in Chiang Mai in 2021.

More: Justin Bateman’s Pebble Portraits

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🌿 Among the Roots — By Debra Bernier

A woman with closed eyes leans out of the driftwood, half hidden by tangled roots. A crack in the wood runs straight down through her face and neck.

💡 Driftwood Fact: Bernier lives on Vancouver Island, Canada. On her website she writes that the sea and the tides have already shaped each piece of driftwood before she starts working on it.

More: Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier

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🌾 Rice Paddy Art — Kodaihasu no Sato in Gyoda, Japan 🇯🇵

Nothing here is painted. The woman in the long robe and the lotus leaves at her feet are rice plants of different colors, planted to a plan so the picture appears as the field grows. It only works from above, from the observation deck at Kodaihasu no Sato next to the field.

💡 Record Fact: In 2015, Guinness World Records recognized Gyoda’s rice paddy art as the largest in the world, at 27,195 square meters, according to Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture.

More: Gyoda’s Rice Paddy Art

🏖️ “Head in the Sand” — By Ian Mutch near Wyadup Rocks, Western Australia 🇦🇺

A giant figure lies across the beach near Wyadup Rocks with its head pushed into the sand, drawn with a rake and checked from a drone. Mutch made it a few days before Australia’s COVID lockdown, as a reply to the panic buying, he told the Augusta-Margaret River Times. Photo by Christian Fletcher.

💡 Tide Fact: His beach drawings are gone within a day or two, according to Mutch’s own archive. After that they exist only in photos and drone footage.

More: Ian Mutch’s Beach Drawings

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💎 Turquoise Crown — By Debra Bernier

A calm face sits at the top of a narrow stick of driftwood, crowned with turquoise. Below it, more blue-green pieces follow the deep crack that splits the wood.

More: Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier

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🎅 Father Christmas — By Beach4Art in North Devon, England 🇬🇧

Father Christmas strides across the sand with his sack, made only from beach pebbles: dark gray for the sack and boots, purple for the coat, white for the fur trim.

💡 Family Fact: Beach4Art is a family of four, Ieva and Dzintars and their two children, who began making art on the North Devon coast during the first COVID lockdown, My Modern Met reports.

More: The Father Christmas at Northam Burrows Beach

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🤲 Protective Hands — By David Popa in AlUla, Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦

Two giant hands reach around the rock-cut Tomb of Lihyan, Son of Kuza, at Hegra. Seen from the air, the tomb sits between them like something being carried.

💡 Material Fact: Popa made the work in 2024 for the Royal Commission for AlUla’s I Care heritage campaign, using only natural elements, including yellow earth from Europe and red earth from the Middle East, and it was designed to disappear within weeks.

More: David Popa’s Prometheus in Crete

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