Captain America is a Marvel Comics superhero that appears in the Avengers movies series. He was created by cartoonists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 from Timely Comics (which later became Marvel Comics). The character was born on July 4, 1918 and later was frozen after WWII and brought back to life in modern times.
Making Captain America
As always, it starts by shoveling about 2,000 lbs of wet sand. Panama City Beach, FL (PCB) sand is very white, uniform and granular. To make it stay as a solid, monolithic and sculptable block, you need to pile it up wet. Sands that are more sticky, like those of Ocean City , NJ which have more clay in them (well, admittedly, being NJ, it could also have more toxic waste, sewage sludge, blood and bits of dumped Mafia victims, all of which also make it more sticky… but I digress.. ). Anyway, some stickier sand types can be piled using dry sand and pouring lots of water through them, and then allowing the pile to “rest” for an hour or so. Not so with PCB sand. If you try that, later you will have fractures and the pile collapses.
So, work close to the water, piling shovels of wet sand, and “plopping” them by gently tossing them onto the pile. Never pat PCB sand, that will fracture the monolithic structure.
It’s best to keep a printed image inside a gallon size ziploc bag to refer to from time to time. Look at the image as geometric shapes and try to picture where they would fit onto the pile of sand. You may need to add more sand to one area of the pile or another. Always keeping it wet as you add more sand.
Captain America is essentially a vertical oval about 16 inches long on top of a 3 ft wide horizonal oval.
Start with the head
Always start and the top and work down. Think about gravity. Carved sand falls DOWN..
Thankfully, Captain America wears a mask. Otherwise, human faces are difficult to do in sand, on a small scale, and make them look right. Oh, sure, if you have a backhoe or teams of people with shovels and are making a human face that is 2 ft or greater in diameter, it’s fine. But to get the detail in a face that is only 10 inches across is literally impossible, and sand grains are effectively like pixels and there is a minimum resolution.
Working conditions
Always work under and umbrella, wear sunscreen, sun shirts, hats, sunglasses. Sun exposure ages your skin and causes skin cancer. YOU are NOT a superhero. It WILL happen to you otherwise…
I like a 3-legged stool, they’re only about $25 on Amazon and have a million other uses (4th of July, picnics, concerts, waiting in long lines, etc.)
It’s best to keep a printed image inside a gallon size ziploc bag to refer to from time to time. See this page for all the other tools you’ll need (fiberglass shovel, pie trowel, etc.)
