Pavel Mylnikov of Moscow beat out 14 other sculptors on Sunday to win the 2018 Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival for the second year in a row.
Mylnikov’s sculpture, titled “Vanishing Muse,” featured two people protruding from columns of sand, looking toward each other.
“It’s about an artist and his muse and I tried to show in my sculpture the moment when it’s coming,” Mylnikov said after being named the winner on Saturday. “This was quite difficult for me, but I did it.”
This year’s competition was Mylnikov’s fourth, so he knew the kind of preparation that was needed to build a winning sand sculpture. He began planning his sculpture three months ago, drawing sketches of his ideas and making changes to the sizes and proportions of the sculpture’s features as he went, he said in an interview for the festival last week.
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“Now I think I agree with myself,” he said before starting the project. “I found exactly the proportions and composition exactly how I want to do [it].”
The International Sand Sculpting Festival is held annually on Revere Beach. This year’s festival ran from Friday to Sunday and featured a fireworks display Saturday night, according to the festival’s website. There was also a tribute drawn in the sand for Weymouth police Sergeant Michael C. Chesna, who was killed July 15.
Rachel Stubbs’s sculpture of a peacock, titled “A Nouveau Love,” was the winner of the People’s Choice award. Winning the second-place prize and the Sculptors Choice award was Jonathan “Jobi” Bouchard’s “Gravity Drops” sculpture.
“It’s unbelievable,” Mylnikov said of winning this year’s competition at the awards ceremony. “I’m Russian, in Boston, winning first prize, in America. It’s a nice feeling.”
Andres Picon can be reached at andres.picon@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @andpicon.