An onshore breeze snaps the flags along the promenade at Hampton Beach as the sunburned legions push past Playland Arcade and crowd the rail across from Blink's fried dough, jostling for a spot.

Sand sculptors have come here to compete – $15,000 in prize money is on the line – and all eyes are on a roped-off parcel where the masters are just warming up, carving nursery-rhyme-themed works as big as compact cars, that incorporate event sponsors.

"Look at the structure of the cheeks on Mother Goose," says Jane Merritt, up from Tewksbury, Mass., with granddaughters Catherine and Samantha. "Just fantastic," she says, as the girls clutch their dripping ice-cream cones, and gape. "You can even see the ice cubes around the Coke sculpture," based on "Three Men in a Tub."

Ms. Merritt will be back tomorrow, she says. So will the sand masters, a dozen of whom will be out here seven hours a day for the next three days transforming their respective 10-ton mounds – excavated from a local sand pit that has a higher silt content than beach sand – into whatever moves them.

It won't necessarily be castles. This international art form has shifted well beyond moats and turrets and grown increasingly competitive as interest has risen – producing al fresco exhibitions to rival some of the best public art.

"They get more sophisticated every year," says John Joynt, a repeat volunteer here at the Hampton Beach Master Sand Sculpting Competition. He has the same reply for anyone who remarks on the intricacy of these warm-up works: "Just wait."

It's not that tools or techniques have gone high-tech. Common kitchen and painter's tools generally serve. Consider Etual Ojeda, a legendary sand sculptor from the Canary Islands (and not among the competitors here).

"He uses a soup ladle and two pieces of wood, one large and one small, and he does the most elaborate things," says Greg Grady, the Hampton event's organizer and a well-known sand sculptor.

The materials are even more basic. "People don't believe it's just sand and water," says Mr. Grady of the works here. "My favorite part of the whole thing is just standing by the wall listening to what people say: 'That's cement,' or 'They put glue in it.' "

In fact, an Elmer's Glue-laced spray is applied to finished works here as a windscreen, Mr. Grady says, to slow deterioration. Before that, a little rain – which is on its way, brought by an onshore breeze – can actually help the binding process.

But adding detail – a claw, a wrinkle, a cornice – within the limits of structural stability is the real challenge of this ephemeral art. Skills have evolved alongside technique.

A century ago in Atlantic City, N.J., artisans carved relief portraits in sand for tourists who were willing to tip. "Then somebody came up with the idea of using wooden forms, and from there we went to the plastic forms," says Grady. "It's basically shoveling sand, adding water, pounding it in, getting it as high as you can, and then carving it down."

What emerges – especially from sand not rounded and "surf-rolled" like beach sand – can be astounding. At Hampton, the pros in the hunt include such legends as Kirk Rademaker and Lucinda "Sandy Feet" Wierenga.

Page: 1 | 2