If you watch Archisand’s Youtube videos, you’ll see that people love to talk with us about sand sculpting! One of the questions we often get is,
“How do you do that?”
So today we’re gonna talk about the basics of how to build a sandcastle or any other form of sand sculpture. Whether a beginner, intermediate or professional sand sculptor, here are some things that we all do.
1. Like an architect or art sculptor, making a sandcastle design is usually the first thing you’d want to do before touching the sand. A design serves as your reference point especially when building large sand sculptures that require careful scaling. You can check out Archisand’s designs here as a jump-off point for your ideas.
2. Choose location very carefully. The layout of a beach, the type of sand, wind direction, tide schedules, etc. can all affect how long your sand sculpture can last.
3. The first step in actually building your sand sculpture is compacting or pounding sand. You can do “softpack” or just make a mound of moist sand from packing and patting; “handstacking” is using your hands to pile up sand, letting the water go down so that it hardens your base foundation, and; using a professional tool like a landscape hand held compactor.
4. Work from the top of your compact sand, then downwards. Start getting into detail after the general outline of the sand sculpture is done. The right tools can really make a difference in the result of your handiwork. Aside from hands, you can use a sand sculpting kit with buckets, shovels, masons trawls, palette knives and a hand-held spray bottle.