Thorny Vines - ice sculpture

Learning the techniques and possibilities of ice sculpture can be daunting especially when you see how effortless experienced carvers make it seem. When I did these sculpture I was still a bit wet/frozen behind the ears but I learned so much from experimenting and watching the other seasoned pros around me I began to really enjoy myself and see some improvements in what I could do.

Against the wall

Niall, Fergus and myself were teamed up again to tackle this wall of ice with no real plan of what they wanted made. The project took Place in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. It was just a wall to run along a path and guild patrons from one scene to the next. The stack of ice blocks was like a checkerboard with as much empty space as ice. This arrangement dictated our design or it would have meant us re-stacking. Not something easily done with 150kg blocks of frozen water.

The special branch

Our mission was to carve something not too interesting so that it would not create a bottleneck as visitors stopped to marvel at our work and instead usher them along Tout de suite. The idea that we settled on was to make a vine like structure with Thorns tying in with the 'Fairy Tale' theme of the entire project and as a subtle focal point two figures intertwined among the boughs.

While Niall and Fergus made the branches i worked on the figures mainly because that was an addition I had added to the design.
What I quickly realised is that ice sculpture is all about profiles and negative space. It is hard to read the volume of a sculpture because of it's transparency and what looks the best is, if you have an interesting silhouette.
Having the two faces overlapping, although maybe interesting in some ways didn't read very well. I decided not the change it because the fact that it may have failed to be noticed fit in with the mission we were given. The Web of vines on the other hand I think worked quite well as they twisted and turned in ever direction.

Bits and bobs

When we were finished this piece we were then given a few other big blocks of ice and asked to make some silly animals playing winter games. Nothing too artistically stimulating but a good practice in blocking out sculptures and cutting and sticking bits together to making thing more delicate.

I made this terrible rain-dear skiing, where I carved the main body, head and arms from one block and then added on the antlers and other bit's and piece. Working with ice allows you to do this which is very freeing and helps you make some nice silhouettes.

For my last piece I made this elephant in a toboggan because why not. Again being able to stick on his trunk and ears showed me the true potential of Ice.
This mixture of additive and subtractive sculpture opens so creative possibilities which are not possible with my sand sculpture. The the optic quality is another thing I really had to get my head around. Though, This is a tale for another sculpture.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

4D Train (Remastered - sand sculpture

The black death - sand sculpture

Lough Derg monster - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.

@ammonite