Follow the star - sand sculpture

Still on a Christmas theme and still with the 3 kings following the star. I made this one just after the Ice sculpture in Eindhoven, Holland. A change of material and in a big glass house in Arcen, Holland. It was a small project with just Wilfred Stijger and Edith Van Der Wetering.

The location was a Glass house botanic gardens kind of thingy on the grounds of Arsen castle and who were we to say no to the king of the castle. (I don't actually think he was really a king)

There isn't much to say about the sculpture or the project as it was pretty quick and all our time was spent between the warm glasshouse and our accommodation.

For me i wanted to focus on the journey the lads had to make to find the newborn Jesus and it was more a picture than a sculpture.

Sand has great difficulty in being turned into long necked thin legged camels so, I used the landscape backdrop as support with some negative carving giving way to a more 3 Dimensional character up front. This allowed me to give the impression of verticality but still be quite safe from collapse. (Yes! I know Verticality is not a real word. My English teaching wife @clodaghdowning just spent the last ten minutes lambasting me for wanting to use it. I told her I wouldn't, so this will be our little secret. She'll never know as she rarely reads my posts. teeheeeheee! But, I hope you know what I mean, sometimes a word just feels right no matter what spellcheck or Clodagh says...So, there)

Carving sand dunes from sand should have been easy but creating natures subtle beauty can be quite difficult. I like the section just above the middle king although I think the area in-front of the largest king is a bit too busy. Less is more when it comes to these sort of things.

I'll put this post to bed now with a quick mention of how I did the star. I added a strong light behind and used a piece of white plastic at the front to give it a surface defused glow. The light was so strong that it was hard to focus on, just don't try this with the sun.

One more Christmas themed sculpture to go from 2004 and then onto something less seasonal, I promise. Tune in next time when I make up more words and rambles. Happy Christmas.

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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.

Follow the Star - ice sculpture

Two rooms with a view- ice sculpture

Zhoushan 2004 - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite