Most people know about snow sculptures and ice sculptures, but they don't know much about sand sculptures. In fact, sand sculptures are not new. Modern large-scale sand sculptures have a history of more than 30 years in the world. There is a special sand sculpture organization in the world - the International Sand Sculpture Association. Every year, international sand sculpture competitions are held all over the world. Japan has the world's only sand sculpture museum, and Belgium and other countries have sand sculpture-themed parks.
Sand sculpture is an art that uses the sand and soil on the beach as a material to sculpt into various shapes by means of stacking, digging, carving, and digging.
Canadians and Americans have the best sand sculpting skills. They sculpt unimaginably gigantic works out of sand. For example, a creation by Canadian Pol Dawkins is 17 meters high.
The key to making sand sculptures is sand quality and weather. It turns out that not any kind of granular material is suitable. The sand needs to be small and clean, free of impurities such as stones and clay, and must stand the test of the sand quality inspection method proposed by sand sculptor Pol Dawkins: first knead wet sand into small balls the size of tennis balls, and then Toss it into the air and catch it with the other hand. If the sand ball does not disperse, it proves that the sand is suitable.
The sand sculptor also needs to do some carpentry work: he nails out several mold boxes with a height of 0.5 meters and a width of 3 meters. The sand sculptor sprinkled a thin layer of sand into the largest mold box, poured in water, compacted the sand, then a layer of sand, water, and compacted... Then put another small layer on the mold box filled with sand. No. 1 is the same mold box filled with sand. In this way, a stack of Arhats - a complete rectangular blank is stacked. The more careful you are to compact the sand, the stronger the rectangle will be, and the better the chance of success. Anyone who has seen a sculptor at work will feel that it is a heavy manual labor: moving buckets of sand and buckets of water around and lifting them very high. So, they are usually a group of able-bodied people.
Next, the sand sculptor begins to remove the wooden mould box from the top level and use special knives to sculpt as conceived. Then remove the mold box on the next layer and continue to sculpt... to the bottom layer - the base, this is the most critical moment. Some works are almost finished, suddenly collapsed and destroyed.
Finally, spray a layer of glue, even if it rains, you are not afraid of it - the sand sculpture is successful!
Sand sculptures are performed in front of the judges and the audience. Not long ago, Russia held the Moscow International Sand Sculpture Competition. The competition is divided into two categories: individual and group. The requirements of the individual competition are: each participant works for 3 days, 8 hours a day, and uses 10 cubic meters of sand to complete the work. "Team Competition" two contestants cooperated for 24 hours. They used 20 cubic meters of sand to complete the creation. Sand sculptors from 4 countries, Russia, the United States, Canada and Ukraine participated, with 25 works, among which were praised: " Sumo, "Funny Mermaid", "Lion", "Cute Bear", etc.
You can use sand to sculpt anything, but the problem is that it is not firm and not long, and its lifespan is at best 1-2 months, which is still not enough In the case of rain. In areas with unstable climate, it can only last for about two weeks. When a urchin climbs up, the lifespan is even shorter. Therefore, sand sculptures are called "short-lived art".
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