King Arthur and his knights have spawned many a story and movie and now it is time to get its sand sculpture treatment.
It was a fitting location in the grounds of Heonbrock Castle, The Netherregions. I was tasked with three others to make this strange composition. It was strange because it was a round sculpture where most of the action took place within and the viewer only had one clear viewing angle.
Like is always the case some heavy sand moving was needed to bring the composition more in line with how us sculptors thought it should be. Luckily we were able to use a digger to add sand to the outer wall to further hide the view except from the one sweet spot. I really liked the idea that we would be carving many details which would be lost to the public but we knew were there.
On the team we had one sculptor who had no experience with sand. Unfortunately, I can't remember his name but what he lacked in experience he made up for in being a jolly fun guy to be around and he really did try his best to make a nice sculpture.
Having four people of very different styles and experience levels needing to make 12 different figures called for a novel approach. I decided that I would try and carve my figures in three different styles to try and further mix things up. If everyone did the same then every statue would look like the work of a different sculptor.
I started with King Arthur, he was bigger than the rest as we wanted to have a fish-eye effect going from one side of the table to the other. This would make everything look much bigger. For him, I made his face by just cutting straight lines into the sand until I had the texture and form I wanted.
For one of the knights, I used a rougher more textured approach. Already these were looking quite different from each other. I know, I know! his hand is quite big but, with the lack of me giving him a beard, it forced me to do it to support his big head.
My final one was different again. Much younger and delicate. This image was taken before he was finished.
While the other three finished their sculptures I jumped to the outside and finished all the wall scroll and logos. From my previous project of making the Colosseum, I had started to enjoy working fast and so I didn't mind doing all the big picture stuff to try and tie the rest of the sculpture together.
Once I was done the others were also finishing up in the centre and we created all the swords laying on the table.
In all, it was a pretty simple piece, just quite big with a lot of sand to carve. As projects go there wasn't much scandal for me to impart and we all had a jolly good time.
I did like the way it was an area to discover hidden right at the centre of all the other sculptures and quite enticing for you to enter but, from the view you did get it was like you had a seat at the table of these knights of old.
Here's the gang smiling like idiots. From the left Rodrigo César, Edith Van Der Wetering, meself and sorry I can't remember his name. Let call him Sir laughsalot.
Here is a panorama from the center of the table, The Globe image at the start of the post was taken by Maxim Gazendam. Thanks Maxim.
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.
Colosseum - sand sculpture
Kolmården Zoo - cement sculpture (Part 2)
Kolmården Zoo - cement sculpture (Part 1) 2011
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