extra chunks of rough ice were placed around the bear to add to the arctic scene around my polar bear ice sculpture. And if you think the completed sculpture doesn’t match the template that well, you’re right. I could have done a better job on the bear, particularly his head. Oh well. He looks like he’s eaten a few too many seals 🤣
updated 8/21/23 with minor tweaks
my polar bear ice sculpture design
This sculpture request was prompted by a sculpture that Christian Funk did in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany as a statement about climate change (according to Greenpeace). My client wanted something similar (and smaller!) for their winter themed party.
While I was looking for polar bear reference photos, I found a surprising photo sequence of a wild polar bear playing with huskies. Apparently, the photos are real and not photoshopped.
The design below was adapted from a design that I’d had for some time, but apparently never used. The sculpture in the photo at top was carved without the benefit of the template below and therefore doesn’t match the design exactly. The sculpture requires two blocks, but you can see, in the second block, there’s a lot of unused ice. You can take advantage of that extra ice to make the sculpture base larger, carve additional elements, or make it into rough chunks that can be placed around the base (as in the photo at top).
The following comments were on the original blog entry. After some technical difficulties, the blog had to be reconstructed (and most recently, the whole thing had to be redone 😩), and this was the only way to keep the original comments.
2 Comments
Anonymous
Thats a really great design! thanx for sharing it.
Butter
Saturday, February 2, 2008 – 12:43 PM
Dawson
Glad you like it; thanks for the comment!
Saturday, February 2, 2008 – 11:24 PM
ok, while the photo at the top doesn’t really look like a polar bear, this design for my polar bear ice sculpture does. If I get a chance to sculpt this again, I will IMMEDIATELY replace the picture at the top to save myself the embarrassment 😆
so this isn't a one block ice sculpture
Just keep in mind that you need 2 standard ice blocks for this fairly large polar bear ice sculpture. The lower block can be a trash block (cloudy, fractured, or whatever) and that won’t hurt the design a bit. The bear, on the other hand, needs to be awesome, and not like mine, lol.
And since my SEO plugin says that I need some more words (not usually a problem, but ok 😆), I’ll say that I’ll try to add a single block polar bear ice sculpture design in the very near future. Pretty much everyone knows that the polar bear is one of the poster children for climate change and that’s ALWAYS on my mind when I think about what I can do as an ice sculptor to make the world a better place. So, even though this is one of my older designs, I’m sure that I’ll have more to say in this space along those lines.
how would it work on a CNC machine?
Well, when I get a bigger CNC machine, I would try this sculpture on it. My current gantry is too short though. But soon…
Ok, maybe not that soon since I’m pretty happy with my CNC. But, how about eventually?
for more info and some guidelines
If you have any questions about this polar bear ice sculpture design, email me or comment below. (It might not let you though.) If you would like to use this ice sculpture design or any other design on this site, please check the design usage guidelines. The design collection page lists designs on the site.
You might also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets facebook page and you can comment there as well as below. Thanks!
