this waving Santa was for a hotel employee event in New Orleans. I’d say that I could have spent a little more time on his beard and expression, but it’s a holiday ice sculpture. Ice sculptors are BUSY 🤷♂️
my waving Santa ice sculpture design
*updated some when added to iss 5/29/23, but it was originally a December post, which you can likely guess from the intro.
This will probably be the last holiday design that I add this year; I might add an angel a little later because we’re getting pretty close to Christmas now. But this still might help if you have sculptures for a Christmas buffet or if you’re doing an outside display. Besides, I’ve been needing a standard Santa design for a while now. I’ve carved this version or similar versions a number of times. This is a classic American Santa based on the widespread Coca-Cola version.
As people go, a Santa ice sculpture is very easy to carve. He’s short and fat and fits almost perfectly within a block of ice. A good part of his facial features is obscured by a beard and mustache and as long as you get the hat right, pretty much everybody will know who it is. Obviously, it’s important that he look jolly, so spend extra time on his expression. It’s not so important to get his eyes perfect as it is to make them look happy.
In order to get the most height I could out of a block, Santa’s right hand is attached. I left ice around Santa’s feet for extra stability and strength. The idea I guess is that Santa is standing in the snow. If you want to reinforce that, you could add some snowflakes.
Santa is kinda heavy, so leave a decent amount of snow around his feet to avoid breaking your Santa ice sculpture at his ankles.
Santa makes a great holiday demo
I do a lot of holiday sculpting demos/performances at zoos for some reason. I’ve done holiday sculpting at 3 zoos so far, 2 in Florida and one in Texas. Although I don’t think I’ve sculpted Santa at the Texas zoo, I’ve definitely sculpted him more than once at the Florida demos.
During a demo, I try hard not to give away what I’m sculpting. I don’t use templates and I occasionally pretend that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I will sometimes start a sculpture upside down to hide what I’m working on.
One year, I was going with a Santa ice sculpture for the night’s demo. Santa is relatively easy to sculpt sideways, right side up, or upside down; it doesn’t matter. So I started Santa standing on his head to disguise what I was doing.
I don’t know how she could see it so easily, but I’d just barely gotten into the serious sculpting (Zoo demos seem to involve a lot of not serious sculpting: shooting snow at the kids!). While other kids were yelling “what is it?” she said: “It’s a Santa Claus upside down!”
I was kind of stunned. It was like guessing a Wheel of Fortune puzzle with only a couple letters. I tried to pretend that she didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was busted, lol!
this stern looking Santa ice sculpture has a prop hat from Walgreens. But it’s still basically the same design, freehand carved during a demo so I wouldn’t immediately give away what I was sculpting. I’m not sure if this was the one that I started sculpting upside down 😬
alternative approaches to this design
It’s easy enough to mirror the design and make your Santa ice sculpture a lefty. As for a truly alternative version, I suppose you could do a color version for a below freezing display. You’d need at least red, black, white, and flesh colored ice, as well as a good deal of patience.
Also, it would be REALLY easy to make your Santa ice sculpture into a Santa ice luge. Funnel end goes in the back of his right hand, luge tubing exits out of his left hand. I’ll see about putting together a quick drawing later.
you can get his right hand from lots of places; you don’t need much ice for it
how would it work on a CNC machine?
I won’t be making any Santa ice sculptures on my CNC for the time being, unless it’s just an engraving. Santa is a bit too hefty for my machine. But it’s certainly doable on some of the ice CNCs that I’ve worked with.
for more info and some guidelines
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