The ‘King Nep­tune and his marine friends’ sand sculp­ture were cre­ated by artist Tim Darby.

“When I was in grade one I drew a pic­ture of a witch’s cat in a storm. It was framed and hung in the staff room. Ever since then I’ve been draw­ing, paint­ing and cre­at­ing. I stud­ied sculp­ture and illus­tra­tion at Curtin Uni and had some work cho­sen for an exhi­bi­tion in the WA Young Artists Award.”

“I enjoy work­ing with raw mate­ri­als — steel, stone, wood etc and par­tic­u­larly like sculpt­ing in sand because it is fun, flex­i­ble, low tech and you can use the sand again! I also like the way peo­ple come by to watch the work pro­gress­ing. Peo­ple can relate to what you are doing. I sup­pose play­ing in the sand brings out the kid in all of us.”
Tim Darby

The sculp­ture took over 4 days to com­plete using more than 3 cubic metres of sand (or nearly 25,000,000,000 grains of sand!).

Next time you visit the beach why not have a go at sand sculp­tur­ing? By explor­ing your coastal envi­ron­ment and using nat­ural debris such as sea­weed, shells and cut­tle­bone you can really bring your sculp­ture to life!