Asterix - sand sculpture (remastered)

Remastered? a disclaimer of sorts

When I first joined Steem I didn't really know what I was doing. Some would say I still don't but it's been fun so far. In the early days I would post a sculpture at random with no rhyme or reason. The more i posted the more confused I got as to what to post next. I didn't want to blow my wad with my favourite work shown first or show all my unsuccessful sculptures either . Finally around 8 months ago I made a decision to be a bit more organised in my posts and start at the start, warts and all and give my posts some structure and document them one by one in a chronological order.

So far I have not shown any sculpture twice but inevitable that day has arrived. I documented this sculpture last year but am showing it again as it fits into the chronology. With sculptures like this I will call the post (remastered) as I just want to be up front and not have you thinking I have run out of sculptures. There are many more new ones to come.

Since I posted these sculptors my posting style has changed and so I will reformat them and add other bit's of info that may have come to mind since it's first outing. New images may be included and new stories provided. All this will give my early posts a chance to get seen by my newer followers and give me a chance to add them to my @steemitworldmap which is linked at the bottom of the post. After that long introduction it's on with the show.

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As a celebration of the comic book Asterix I was asked to take part in an international competition in the French seaside town of Hardelot, France. All sculptors were asked to make a piece which was based on the very famous children's books and they would be judge by a few people including local celebrities and politicians. (if my memory serves me correctly the original illustrator was among them). I wasn't going to take the competition seriously but was looking forward to learning more about Asterix. I never read it when I was younger.

Asterix is a French Comic book series . It first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comic magazine Pilote in 1959. Since then there have been 34 books which have been translated into over one hundred languages and selling over 325 million copies. This makes its co-creators Frances bestselling authors abroad. (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix)

I include this for illustration purposes only. Not my work

Two sides to every story

Not being a reader of the series I decided to take the approach of how the writer Rene Goscinny would come up with the ideas and then hand over Albert Uderzo who would create the images (this was till the death of Goscinny in 2009 then Uderzo began writing and illustration) In a way I was interested in their collaboration and wanted to show this with a two sided piece. As required by the organisers I did a quick sketch of an idea but knew that when i arrived in Hardelot I would probably change it.

I knew my sketch was very illustrative and pedestrian and not really something I would feel passionate about executing. What i came up with onsite was much more fun and creative.

On one side we have the hand of Goscinny with thought bubbles as he forms the idea for the story and on the other the words are brought to life. I copied the illustrations from one of their famous books but made it so that as you walked around the sculpture the drawing cells only came together at one visual point. Quite a simple piece really but lots of fun to do.

Let's hold it together

One of the judging criteria was that the sculpture needed to be a certain height. My composition needed to have the right angle of the page at the top but to make it fit the block of sand I was given this needed to be lowered to give me the width. My solution in order to keep the height was to carve a paper clip at the top holding the papers together. This would give me the height and allow me to drop the pages about 30cm.

After spending my first half day making this wonderful paper clip with its cut through I went for lunch and at that point I saw a large seagull landing on the top. The sand held for a moment and them collapsed under his weight. Damn. There was no way to build it up again so I resorted to putting a staple holding the pages together instead and worked on down.

I was quite happy with the piece in the end and had nice comments from the other carvers regarding my taking another approach than just making a cartoony illustration which is what they decided on.
The judges made their decision and even though I was told they liked mine I was disqualified for not having a sculpture that reached a certain height.

C'est la vie.

See what I mean about competitions. Such nonsense, they try and make rules that constrain the creative ideas which for me are the most important thing when it comes to art. There's no sour grapes as I was happy going home having made a sculpture rather than just an illustration.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Acorns - sand sculpture

Tranquil-sand-sculpture

Caged baby - ice sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite