Gallery

Take a look at my (slowly) expanding range of, frankly, ridiculously detailed insect illustrations – all meticulously drawn from real specimens and/or photos using my actual, human appendages. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of beetles, mantises, moths, true bugs and one owl that snuck in? Not a problem – the filter lets you browse by specific families (it helps if you know Latin).

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Illustration of a tiger beetle as seen from above. The beetle is a metallic green and blue with bold red highlights. The beetle has very long, slender legs and large mandibles.

Illustration of a shiny metallic mantis with a green, blue, yellow and red sheen to its iridescent body. This mantis has particularly chunky forelegs.

Drawing of a moth that really does look an awful lot like a wasp. It has a black and yellow body with bright orange antennae.

Illustration of a spotted lanternfly, which has green forewings with yellow spots, orange hindwings and a green and yellow body.

Drawing of a slender pink and yellow praying mantis. It has incredibly thin legs and a very long thorax.

Illustration of a brown and yellow grasshopper with spread wings. The forewings are a mottled brown, resembling a dead leaf.

Illustration of a juvenile long-eared owl sitting on a mossy log

Illustration of a planthopper with wings spread and a long 'proboscis covered in spines

Drawing of an extremely furry blue and orange beetle

A detailed drawing of a green praying mantis with its large wings spread

Illustration of a praying mantis with green and orange wings

Illustration of a large brown and orange moth

Illustration of a grasshopper with bright blue and pink wings

Detailed illustration of a mottled brown mantis that's camouflage d to appear like a dead leaf

Illustration of a katydid with large wings. The upper wings are green and resemble a leaf

Detailed illustration of a cream beetle with black spots. This beetle has a single horn protruding from the thorax above the head

Illustration of a yellow grasshopper with small pink wings

Illustration of a lovely yellow and pink moth

Illustration of a brown, cream and black beetle with large, furry front legs

Illustration of a green and yellow beetle

Illustration of a stunning black and red assassin bug

Illustration of a black and cream speckled goliath beetle with large iridescent black wings

Illustration of aspotted lantern bug. It has large yellow spots on its upper wings and an elecrtic blue and black lower wings

Illustration of a vibrant green insect with small transparent wings

Illustration of a furry brown and black bee with transparent wings

Illustration of a bright red and black beetle with yellow antennae

Illustration of a black and yellow beetle, most notable for its thick, long antennae

Illustration of a blue, orange and red shield bug

Illustration of a black stag beetle with an orange abdomen

Illustration of a green stag beetle with the right wing unfolded

Illustration of a brown tarantula with blue legs

Illustration of a green leaf insect, so called because its body really looks like a fresh leaf

Illustration of a green hawkmoth with small pink areas on its wings

Illustration of a bright yellow shield bug

Illustration of a red and black ladybird with striking yellow and black markings on the abdomen which resemble eyes

Illustration of a well camouflaged brown stick insect with orange wings

Illustration of a leaf-like katydid with large green upper wings and transparent lower wings

Illustration of a stick insect with large yellow wings

Detailed illustration of an orange and black cicada with bold black / brown wings

Illustration of a stag beetle with large antlers and a red abdomen

Illustration of a striped brown and black moth, with pink lower wings

Illustration of a beetle with a bright pink head and thorax and a blue and cream abdomen

Illustration of a bright blue carpenter bee

Illustration od a bright blue stick insect with small red wings

Illustration of a beetle with extremely long front legs

Three frames of differing sizes each with a different bug print in them

Shop

You can buy (or gaze longingly at) these drawings as open-edition A3 or A4 art prints or smaller illustrated postcards in my Etsy shop. The larger prints are a great way to examine the meticulous detail of my drawings, and my ever-expanding postcard set is a very popular product, with many customers choosing to frame these A6 images on a feature wall (bonus points if you use lovely mismatched frames).

So, whether you’re adding to your existing collection of natural history prints, creating a new wall of bug art from scratch, or gifting to that friend who loves bugs but didn’t enjoy that swarm of locusts in a Jiffy bag you left on their doorstep last year as much as you’d hoped they would, my shop is guaranteed* to be of interest.

*Guarantee only applies if what you’re looking for happens to exactly match what I’m selling.

Visit Martyn's Etsy shop

A front cover mockup showing a drawing of a lantern bug on a green background, with the book titled 'Icones Insectorum'

I’m making a book

I’ve lost count* of the number of times people have stopped me in the street and, quite rightly, asked:

“I love your drawings but lack sufficient wallspace to display them properly – when are you going to release a lovely large-format hardback book collating the last 8 years of intense drawing that I can leave on my coffee table to trick visitors into thinking I’m culturally astute?”

Well, these fictitious entities will be pleased to hear that I am now, in 2026, in the process of creating such a book. Allow me to entice you with some buzzwords – it’ll:

be big (I’m hoping for around 28cm x 28cm),
be hardback,
include 50 full colour insect drawings…
…and a number of black and white sketches,
explain my process from specimen preparation through to tedious drawing,
include some zoomed-in details so you can appreciate the effort I put in and question my life choices,
be a bit of an homage to old entomology illustrations,
possibly be called something like ‘Icones Insectorum’ (unless I can be successfully persuaded that that’s a terrible idea),
be completely funded by me, so you’re not going to see it in Waterstones,
probably be fairly expensive, as it’s a low volume, high quality art book,
hopefully be done later this year (2026).

A mocked up page spread showing a chapter title on the left (Coleoptera, with a drawing of a bamboo weevil) and an illustration of a goliath beetle on the right.

If you’d like to follow the progress of the book, keep an eye on this page – I’ll endeavour to post (somewhat infrequent) updates as I reach major milestones throughout the gestation period, followed (hopefully) by a larger update when it eventually emerges from its intricate silk cocoon and takes flight**.

*because I’m bad at counting, not because it happens frequently. Or ever.

**this is probably a metaphor.

About

Drawing stupidly detailed insects is a hobby that has kept me (more or less) out of mischief for several years now. I’m often asked “Why insects?” by people who much prefer cute and fluffy mammals (or cute and feathered birds), and my answer tends to be that insects are incredibly diverse, endlessly fascinating and an awful lot of fun to draw. Furry moth bodies, spiky beetle legs and metallic iridescent elytra are all great challenges to try and reproduce, and I’m very proud of the variety of textures and colours I’ve been able to replicate in my work. Oh, and I sell prints and postcards, both via my online Etsy shop and at a couple of in-person events per year – The superbly organised Bournemouth Bug Show and the gargantuan Amateur Entomologist Society Exhibition.

A short history lesson

A distressingly long time ago I studied illustration at university (First Class Honours, thanks for asking) where my crowning achievement was securing a book deal for a surreal faux-scientific book about Velcro Cows. I also created some illustrations for an episode of Driver Dan’s Story Train on CBeebies, dabbled in landscape photography until my back gave up and drew some crustaceans. Nowadays I work as a UX designer by day and spend an hour or so drawing bugs in the evening. My end goal is to self-publish a book full of 100 of these drawings, but my glacial progress means this is still around 10 years away. In fact, writing this very text is delaying my progress further, so I’ll stop.

A really very proud indeed Martyn standing in front of 2 mantis illustrations at the Southern Nature Art exhibition.

Exhibitions

As well as featuring on what can only be described as ‘several’ of my customers’ walls, my drawings have made their way into a couple of exhibitions over the years. The most exciting was 2025’s Southern Nature Art exhibition at Rookesbury Park, an event that’s well worth entering / visiting if you’re a fan of nature art, as the standard and variety of work was fantastic. Exhibitions like this are excellent opportunities for people to appreciate my drawings at both a macro and micro level, which is an unnecessarily fussy way of saying that they can enjoy the realism of the piece from afar and then marvel at the intricate mark-making upon closer inspection. A couple of my pieces can also be seen in The Adam and Eve pub in central London, having been purchased a few years ago as part of a refurb, thus proving that at least 1 UK interior designer has excellent taste.

Magazine spread with Man-Faced Shield bug image across the right page, with text on the left

Contact

If this site has compelled you to get in touch, perhaps to enquire about specific prints, subjects or find out more about my process, you can email me right here.