All these after the computer (except for the "dolphin") were made by carrying water from the ocean in a large bucket, then mixing it with sand in a small bucket, and building it handful by handful. I'm not sure how long it's supposed to take, but it took me an hour or two for each piece. The frog took almost 3.5 hours.
This started out to be a castle, but I got bored with it and made something else.
I think this was the last one I made just by digging up wet sand and making a pile of it.
The little thing in the knothole is supposed to be a squirrel, but I made the whole thing too small and couldn't get the level of detail I wanted.
I couldn't remember what the hair on those Egyptian statues looks like, so I just faked it. I suppose it would have helped if I had worked from a picture.
I made one of these last year, so I already knew how to make it, and I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to make....
From this point on the pictures are from Chincoteague, VA.
I tried to make the lion crouching as if he were ready to spring, but couldn't pull it off. Maybe I'll try again someday.
The frog is probably the best thing I did this year, and it lasted for at least 4 days that I know of. You can still see it in the picture of the dolphin, which I did the next day.
This started out to be a whale, then a shark. I've never tried to build
large things before, and kept using too steep an angle, causing it to collapse. After several hours I gave up and roughed in a dolphin.
If you look in between the crab's eye stalks, you can see the little plastic crab I used as a model. You can also tell that it's getting pretty late in the day. Nearly everyone had left the beach, but I wanted to finish my crab. I cheated a little on t
he legs. Since I was in a hurry, I just made a pile of moderately wet sand on each side of the body and then just carved away everything but the legs. The body and claws were made from the bucket as usual, though.
By this time, vacation was nearly over, and I was getting tired of hauling water and digging sand. I meant to make this VW larger, but didn't feel like it. As a result, and my failure of visualization, the proportions aren't quite right.
This was done in the last hour or so of the last day we were on the beach. There was already a hole there, so I just picked one side of it and started carving. Turned out pretty good, even if I didn't have anything in mind when I started. (These were made from right to left, as if it mattered.)
