Sand Blooper Reel

I'm back from the beach now. I'm pretty happy with the sand stuff I did, but also a little frustrated at "the ones that got away". By this, I mean the ones I was working on that collapsed before I could get a finished shot. Three times, I tried to do a standing dwarf. All three times, the face fell off before I could complete it (sigh). Anyway, here's a couple things I didn't get to finish.

I had high hopes for this pirate. His eyepatch came out well, and the parrot was working well, too. I was going to put a sword in one hand and a bottle of rum in the other. One boot was to rest on a small barrel.




I tried two eagles this year, both collapsed before completion. This one was a little fat, but I could fix that. The real problem was with the wind. Both days, the wind was too strong, and it just buffeted the wide, thin structure of the wings until they gave in.

Classic Sand Castle

My last piece for the summer (probably) is a sand castle. Rainy sent me a photo of Castle Neuschwanstein in Germany, and I used that as a starting point. I haven't done many structures this summer, and it seemed fitting to do a sand castle.

The castly was built over two days. It's been very windy (not good for sand work), so I had some challenges getting it built. On the first day, I got this done:

When I looked out the next morning, I was pleased to see it had held up well through the night, so I started work on it some more. I added some defensive towers and a stone texture to the lower section. I also rebuilt the towers and gave them a different look.

Then I added the front wall/arch, and an arched stairway to the upper level. I really like the effect of the "broken wall" to the left of the arch. I'm always amazed at how effective it looks. Note that one of the defensive towers disappeared while I was making the front wall/arch. It fell for no particular reason, and I was too far along to replace it.

I finished around 7:30pm just as it was starting to get dark. Unfortunately, when I looked from my balcony an hour later, I could see a 3 year old climbing on top of it (completely destroying it) while his parents looked on (sigh).

The Lost Lighthouse of Czernobia

One of the wonders of the ancient world, the Lost Lighthouse of Czernobia was recently discovered when an earthquake exposed an ancient coastal city that had been under water for thousands of years. Here's a recreation of the lighthouse:

I started with a lardge platform, and thought it would be cool to incorporate human features into architecture. I wound up with this structure. Once it became a sort of light house, I decided to add some glyphs and ancient letters for effect.

Snoopy Spends the Night

I tried to build an eagle over the fourth of July, but the wind was too strong and it wouldn't stay up.

A couple days later, I build snoopy and his doghouse. I've done this before in previous years, but I'm really happy with this one. He wasn't done till about 4pm, and too soon the sun went down and I left the beach wondering what would be left of him in the morning.

The next morning, I was pleased to find him still intact (except for the ball on the end of his nose, and that was pretty easy). Dozens of people came by and took photos. Later in the day, I decided to add Charlie Brown himself to the piece

It's amazing how adding a zig zag on his shirt makes him look like Charlie Brown!

My niece, Emma, got a hermit crab while we were at the beach, and she asked me to make a sand hermit crab. A few minutes later, and here's the crab:

My most ambitious project yet - Lincoln

Today's project took most of the day. The wind was too strong to make anything yesterday, so I wanted to do something big. I took Andrew's suggestion and made the seated Abraham Lincoln statue from the Lincoln Memorial.

A big challenge to this one is making the chair. I wanted it to be big, and it had to be really stable. I started by outlining it wiht sand walls, then pouring water in the enclosed area and pouring dry sand in it. This allows the maximum compression/stability of the base. It too about three hours to make the chair, though. Here it is.

With the chair done, I started on the body. It came together pretty well.

So I built the head and arms. The face came out really well. The statue had his hair in a series of waves that worked well for sand.

Then I built out his suit (he has a funky tie it took me a while to figure out, and some jacket with some lapels and folds in it. Finally I built out the legs. Unfortunately, about the time I finished with his shoes, his face collapsed, but I got some good pictures before it went.

I cleared the head off the neck and left it there, where many passers by stop and wonder what happened.

July 1 - George Washington

So I started off today trying to do a castle. I had a really cool square arch, but then it collapsed (it was a big arch so I was asking for it).

I thought about what else I could do for the Fourth of July. I decided on a bust of George Washington and called up to the room and asked Cathy to bring down a $1 bill I could use as a reference. It wouldn't hurt for you to have one yourself to compare notes.

First, I built up the form. I use a lot of wet sand for this and this is the wearying part as I lug buckets of water from the beach and plop a couple hundred pounds of sand/water into a suitable shape. When I first looked at the dollar bill, I discovered Washington's right shoulder was much higher than his left. This isn't because he's related to quasimodo, it's because it's a 2-D picture. Instead of working straight off the dollar bill, I realized I'd have to adjust to make him 3-D again.

Once I got the pile in the right shape, I started working on the face. I've never tried to do a face that was a recognizable likeness, so I wasn't sure how it would work. First I sketched where his eyes, nose, mouth would be. Then I started in on the nose. Because I was carving into the head, the nose would be the most prominent feature so I did it first. Then I worked on the eyes. I've had trouble with eyes before. This time I realized I needed to use Eyelids! When you don't use them, your faces look like muppets every time.

I struggled to get the eyebrows, eyes, and forehead working, but a kind of got lucky at one point and had everything in the right proportion and balanced.

I then went to work shaping the face, getting the chin and cheekbones right. When it came to the mouth, I called in Cathy for help. She's good at suggesting how to do things. Washington has a "serious" mouth. He doesn't smile, but he has a certain expression. We decided to use a slightly open mouth and I upturned one corner and downturned the other to make him look a little enigmatic.

Once the head was done, the rest was pretty straightforward. I worked out how to do his suit and cravat, using a raised collar like in the $1 bill portrait:

Finally, I added the name and called it a day.

It took 3 hours start to finish. Roughly 1 hour to make the form, 1 for the face, and 1 for the rest.

So far, almost 20 people have stopped and taken a picture of it -- as good a rating as I know for how good it was. One lady told me she guessed it was George Washington from the balcony behind me (she was just about/behind the blue awning).

A Vulnerable Medium

We went for a walk on the beach a couple hours after sundown last night, and I discovered that the Koala had been reduced to a sandpile. Sometimes this happens naturally. This time there were adult footprints in it that indicated someone indulged the urge to stomp it.

To be fair, I can never tell whether the stomping happened after a collapse, where someone figures, "it's fallen down, I can stomp it!" or before where someone figures "This is clearly something someone spent a lot of time on, I can stomp it!". In this case, though, I suspect the latter.

While to some, I guess, stomping a sand castle is a guilty pleasure, it breaks a cardinal rule of each etiquette:

UNLESS YOU BUILT IT, DON'T STOMP IT.

I have to admit, it does dissappoint me a little when this happens, but the vulnerability of the work is a part of the medium. After I build it, it becomes a sort of performance piece where I watch (sometimes from a nearby chair, other times from the balcony of our condo 200 yards away) people walk by and react to it. There's the nervous times when the preschool boy ahead of his family notices it first and I wonder it he'll stomp it before his parents can stop him. I watch people think about touching it, wonder it it's really just sand, but usually they don't do it. If they do, there's nothing I can do about it, though. It's vulnerable and delicate, and depends on people's better nature for survival.

One time, I was trying to make the three monkeys (see no evil... etc). I had the first one done and the second one nearly done. There were a group of teenage boys who hung around and watched me work. One in particular asked a lot of questions and was very interested.

At one point, while I was finishing Monkey #2, he reached over and just lightly touched the head of Monkey #1. I guess he was curious what it would feel like. As soon as he touched it, the entire thing collapsed into a pile of sand. While I liked the monkey, the look on this poor kid's face was priceless! He just stood there with his jaw dropped. He was horrified. What could he say? I let him hang there for a second or two, and then burst out laughing. After all, getting upset wouldn't bring it back, so why not laugh? He much have apologized 40 times before leaving. Wherever he is, I bet his friends are still reminding him of this.

As much work as I put into one of these, it only lasts a day or so. It reminds me of how, from God's perspective, almost nothing we build will last. Our buildings, companies, art, will at some point be as gone as yesterday's sand sculpture. The only things that are truly built to last are the things we build in our souls and the souls of others. As Paul said, "... these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. "

While the monkey I made was long gone, I will always carry the memory of the look on that young man's face, and hopefully wherever he is, he'll carry the memory of a day where he made a dumb mistake with catastrophic results, and instead of getting upset, I chose to laugh about it.

From Dwarf to Koala in .5 Seconds

This is my Fourth summer doing sand sculptures. A good sample of my previous work is here.

To kick off this year, I thought I'd try making a dwarf. This is a challenge because it's a pretty tall form to make out of sand free standing. The first time I tried it, I got a good face, and with Andrew's help, I got the beard just right. I had made a nify belt and was working on his boots when he thing split in half an collapsed. Unfortunately, I have no photos of it.

This morning, I thought I'd try a Dwarf again, but this time I used a more sturdy method of making the tower. Unfortunately, I also gambled and tried to make it too high, and the top half collapsed.

When this happens, sometimes I look a what's there and see if the shape gives me any ideas of what to make of it. Its kind of like finding pictures in clouds. This time, I could vaguely see some creature holding onto the top of a tree. A couple hours later, and I had this fellow:

Much more cuddly than a dwarf, anyway.

When I completed it, it became more "performance art" as the tide came in higher than usual -- right up to the base of the piece. The bear was clearly scrambling for higher ground!

Fortunately, he survived high tide. Later in the day I added some details to the tree, with some help from Andrew.