Always wondered how we make these sand sculptures?? The biggest “secret” (besides working with highly skilled world class artists) is to use the right sand. Beach sand is usually not suitable for sculpting, because the sand grains became round by erosion. In the ideal world, we use young river sand. But don’t worry, we will help you find the right sand! Below, we give you an impression of the building process. This example is a fairly small sand sculpture, but the process is more or less the same for all sizes!
01
MAKE WOODEN FORMS
We bring or make wooden forms, which we put together in the size needed for the design of this particilar sculpture. We place the wooden forms on top of a base pile of sand, and we fill the form with sand, and mix the sand with a lot of water.
02
COMPACTING THE SAND
To compact the sand, we use large “wacker plate” machines, which vibrate and create a solid block of sand inside the wooden forms. We repeat this process a few times, until we have created a pyramid shaped tower of forms, filled with compacted sand
03
SCULPTING
After the compacting is finished, we take off the wooden forms, starting at the top. This exposes the solid blocks of sand, in which we start “drawing” and roughly shaping the design of the sculpture into the sand. We start with shovels and fairly large tools, but for the more detailed work, the tools get smaller and more delicate.
04
THE FINAL SAND SCULPTURE
Once all the sand is sculpted, the sand sculpture is finished. Sometimes, when a sculpture is built outdoors, we will spray the sculpture with a few layers of so called “wind screen”, to protect the sculpture against the elements of wind and rain. A sand sculpture can stay up for months or even longer, depending on the weather and environment.
You name it, we dig it!
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