during my first visit to China, I judged an international combo ice sculpture and snow sculpture event. This was one of the snow sculptures. It was a challenging combination event for the participating teams, as sculpting ice and snow require different approaches. It also turned out to be a challenge for the judges, as the competition format changed on the fly and we ended up judging 60 snow and ice sculptures in just 2 hours. (That’s a lot!)
what's the difference between a snow sculpture and an ice sculpture?
Over the years, I’ve seen lot of people talk about amazing ice sculptures they’ve seen, when what they’re really taking about are snow sculptures. Years back, way before TikTok, I was repeatedly forwarded an email that contained a mix of ice and snow sculptures, all supposedly from Harbin, China (big surprise, none were from Harbin).
To confuse things even further, snow sculptures ARE ice sculptures, sort of. On the other hand, genuine ice sculptures are NOT snow sculptures. If those 2 sentences leave you at all perplexed, don’t worry, I’ll explain.
Btw, I started this post with the idea that I’d write a little, post it, and then fix it with pics and diagrams later. But that’s not really what happened. Still, I may fill out this post with more diagrams, videos, etc. (Like maybe later I can add a snow>ice>water cycle diagram here…)
an ice sculpture from an international snow and ice sculpting competition in Northern China. This was part of the same competition that had the snow sculpture at the top of the post.
if you like Venn diagrams, here’s how snow sculptures relate to ice sculptures, at least from a technical/scientific point of view. The proportions are definitely approximations! However, this diagram might lead you to believe that you can call an obvious snow sculpture (or even a snowman) an ice sculpture. You’re going to sound kinda stupid if you do!
how snow sculptures are ice sculptures
Obviously, snow sculptures are made of snow. I mean, it’s in the name! However, snow is ice. It’s not the kind of ice that you drop in your drink at the end of a long day, but it’s still frozen water, and therefore ice.
I suspect you already know that the giant blizzards of snow that cause school cancellations and interstate pileups are made of a π© ton of tiny snowflakes that all fell from the sky. These snowflakes number at least in the millions. Ok, billions? Probably trillions? I haven’t bothered yet to go out and count π€·ββοΈ (I’ll get right on that, next snowfall that I see in New Orleans…)
At any rate, every one of those snowflakes are tiny ICE crystals that formed from water vapor high in the clouds. So snow sculptures are thus ice sculptures, some assembly required.
snow sculptures are kind of like sand sculptures
Even though snow sculptures are composed wholly of ice (as packed snowflakes), they generally act more like sand sculptures than actual ice sculptures. The particulate nature of snow, at least during below freezing conditions, make snow sculptures more akin to the silicate based sand sculptures. And they’re frequently made in similar ways: both snow and sand are often compressed in large forms, with water added to enhance the structural stability.
In addition, the backyard snowman bears far more structural similarity to the hastily constructed beach sandcastle than it does to the chemically identical monogram ice luge. This similarity depends a lot on below freezing temps for the snowman, but the particulate nature of the snow and sand is more important than the molecular composition in determining their basic construction.
There is one crucial difference, however. Snow’s characteristics change under a far smaller temperature range than sand’s do. Sure, you can melt sand (and make glass), but it takes a LOT of heat to do that. In contrast, snow’s bonding characteristics can change dramatically with just a small shift in temperature. (Humidity also plays a role.) Very cold, unbonded snow sucks to make anything out of. It just blows apart. But packed snow closer to its melting point is potentially great for making even detailed sculptures.Β
here’s an ice sculpture of snowflakes…so a snow ice sculpture. What do we do with this one then? π€¦ββοΈ
how ice sculptures aren't snow sculptures
But ice sculptures aren’t snow sculptures. Ice sculptures are sculpted from natural or artificially produced ice blocks. Ideally, these ice blocks are great big, nearly perfect ice crystal structures. In fact, the Clinebell-style ice block machines are specifically designed to help water molecules slowly align and assemble into a giant ice crystal structure. During production, the clear ice block slowly builds, the ice forming as the water molecules fall into a specific alignment, the crystal lattice. Optically, the formed ice block stays nearly transparent because the crystal structure stays properly aligned. Light can pretty much pass right through the aligned structure.
With snow, the many individual flakes have no regular alignment and are all packed together in different orientations. Rather than passing straight through, light hits the jumbled crystal surfaces and reflects, giving snow its white appearance. Generally then, snow sculptures are white and ice sculptures are clear. This is far from a perfect generalization though; some ice sculptures are made from color ice or include “snow” parts. Also, not all ice blocks are completely clear. But that’s a different story.
here’s a neat video about ice crystals. I would say a “cool” video, but using that word for the 50 millionth time to describe something ice-related just isn’t…cool π
uh, what about snowman ice sculptures?
this is a Frosty the Snowman ice luge that I made years ago. Even though it’s a “snowman,” it’s still not a snow sculpture. Definitely an ice sculpture!!
If you look at the Venn diagram earlier in the post, I put backyard snowmen as a large chunk of the snow sculptures that get made. That’s because the snowmen and snowwomen casually constructed in backyards surely vastly outnumber “real” snow sculptures. I don’t have any actual data for this, but this is one of those common sense arguments.
Far less commonly made are ice sculptures of snowmen. I haven’t made that many in my career, but I make them on occasion. I actually did a whole post about snowmen ice sculptures a while back. But these snowmen are the rare snow people that are not snow sculptures, but ice sculptures.
also, you can't move snow sculptures
There’s a big practical difference between ice sculptures and snow sculptures: you can’t move a snow sculpture. I mean, you CAN, but it’s not going to be easy!
Ice sculptures, on the other hand, go places all the time. We once even did a reality show, Shipping Wars, where we shipped a bunch of ice pieces (largely an ice bar) from the Tampa, FL area to Gulfport, MS. Possibly the only “real” part of that show was that they really did ship the ice from Tampa to Gulfport in the vehicle shown on the show, which was most definitely not a refrigerated truck!
These days, with professional ice sculpting companies, most ice sculptures are made at the company location and delivered to the event. Of course, there are still a lot of venues that have someone in house to make their ice sculptures. But certainly in my area, and probably in most places in the U.S. too, the bulk of the ice sculptures you see at events were produced offsite and delivered to the event. This hasn’t always been the case, but it’s part of the evolution of the ice sculpting industry.
Once in a while, I still sometimes make ice sculptures onsite though. For the last big onsite project I worked on, I put together a small team to go sculpt a giant wave sculpture for a supermodel photo shoot in L.A. That was a lot of fun, except for the part where we didn’t get to meet the supermodel π Btw, for some reason, I apparently suck at meeting supermodels (I’m currently 0 for 2.), but that’s also a story for another time…
With snow sculptures, however, there’s no delivering them. As far as I know, they’re ALWAYS made on site, at their final destination. So if a frozen water sculpture just got delivered to your party, it’s an ice sculpture. But if they made it there (and it’s pretty cold out also), it COULD be a snow sculpture π
links and stuff
Hey, speaking of snow sculptures, you could also read about the time that Michelangelo tried his hand at a snow sculpture π² Yes, really!!
If you felt like this post was a little underwhelming, please lodge your complaint in the little comment box below. This was one of those posts where I got kind of stuck on it, so I feel a bit underwhelmed myself. Maybe I can fix it later, but sometimes you just have to post what you’ve got and move on.
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