Sculptor Creates Hogwarts Castle Out of Sand
Sculpting sandcastles has turned into a truly unique form of art. While more traditional artists often perfect their talents on canvas, paper, or even iPads, the sandy medium is where Leonardo Ugolini shines.
In an Instagram post, Ugolini films himself creating Hogwarts Castle completely from sand. He starts by filling a large cylinder, made by cutting away the bottom of a bucket, with sand to create the tall towers that define the Hogwarts Castle shape. To get the details just right, Ugolini scrapes the sand into shape with sculpting knives. While these tools are common among painters, a sculpting knife is arguably more essential to a sand artist. Different shapes and sizes allow for a variety of textures and details to be added to the art. In the Instagram video posted by Ugolini, you can see that even the tiniest details can be added with his tiniest knife.
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When he isn’t scraping away sand to form the shapes, he’s adding sand to give more definition to his art. To add windows, Ugolini shapes the tiny structures by hand and places them exactly where they need to be on the towers. As he creates and builds Hogwarts Castle, everything comes into place. But once he’s done with the buildings, he doesn’t stop there. Since Hogwarts sits adjacent to the magnificent Black Lake, it was only fitting that Ugolini’s castle does the same. He continues to carve around his castle to let the water from the nearby lake pool around his creation. While most amateur sandcastle creators may not have the skill to keep their structures upright when the water comes flowing in, that’s not the case for Leonardo Ugolini. The castle stands tall!
Since posting the video, it’s been viewed over 18,000 times, and the comments are overwhelmingly positive. “Brilliant” and “this is incredible” are among the many positive thoughts being posted from fans of Ugolini’s work.
This isn’t the only work of sand art that Leonardo Ugolini has crafted. His Instagram profile is dedicated to his sculptures. Not all his work is in miniature form like the Hogwarts Castle re-creation. Some are giant, life-size figures built into walls of sand and some are re-creations of plants and animals.
Since not everyone is a master of sand, Ugolini wrote a book about the secrets of his craft. Sand Castles: Secrets and Techniques explores how to build professional-quality castles in just 81 pages. It’s for sale as an e-book online.
