my Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design is perhaps a bit too nice looking. Feel free to make yours a bit meaner π‘
updated 10/24/23 with a Baroque art video
a Bernini-ish (barely) Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design
Yes, I know this Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design doesn’t look anything like a dolphin, unless maybe you mean the dolphinfish. And even then, not so much 
The key word here that’s messing things up is “Baroque.” The Baroque art period was an art movement that came after the Renaissance. Famous Baroque artists include Rembrandt, Carravaggio, Rubens, and, one of my favorites, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Bernini was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the Baroque period and some consider him the period’s successor to Michelangelo. In fact, he did his own version of David, one that was somewhat more dynamic and expressive, while not nearly as famous.
this video on recognizing Baroque art features Bernini’s David and explains the role of emotion and the relationship with time in Baroque art. Sadly, no dolphins show up in this video, but I’ll keep looking!
Neptune with a dolphin from the Met, which is scaled down and modeled after the marble Bernini sculpture Neptune and Triton. The duck-billed dolphin wasn’t in the original, but Bernini did use this creature in other works. Incidentally, Neptune is supposed to be holding a trident, which would make sense given his pose.
my Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design faces to the right on porpoise. (Sorry, had to use that somewhere π€ͺ) Looking to the right can symbolize looking to the future, as least from a Western culture point of view. If you don’t like this, there’s the mirror image template below π
what strange creature is this?!
My Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design is a bit more friendly-looking than the Bernini and heraldic versions it’s based on. You might run into one of these guys on the edge of an old map where the cartographer didn’t know what else to put except unknown horrors and mysterious creatures. My guess is that the artists heard about dolphins and porpoises, but maybe they didn’t get the news that they were marine mammals without scales. Since nobody could google it, these strange creatures got a little fish and a lot of imagination.
Those old dolphins can look downright mean and they often appear more sea-monsterish than anything. Mine still has the large lips, although some versions will show more of a duck bill. So if your Baroque dolphin ice sculpture turns out to have a bit of a nasty expression, that’s more than ok; it’s probably authentic!
you get the left facing version of my Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design for no extra charge! Isn’t that great?
works great for ice fountains!
this ice fountain is composed mostly of an elevated Baroque dolphin ice sculpture, an ice bowl, an electric pump, and plumbing. The way an ice fountain works is that there is tubing that drains from a plastic container in the ice bowl. That liquid passes through the pump, which pumps the liquid (often an alcoholic drink) back up through the dolphin. Then it goes out the dolphin’s big lips and squirts back into the bowl to start all over again. You need the right pump, exit tube angle, and bowl position, or all you’ll get is a mess.
I’m about 96.7% sure that I ran into a version of the drawing above in George P. Weising’s Ice Carving Professionally, which is a really awesome and impressively old book on ice sculpting. (It’s from 1954!) I will double check my memory when I figure out where I put my copy 
I’d seen pics of another ice sculptor’s version of this piece before, and when I saw the Weising drawing, it made more sense as to the idea’s origin. And then, when I was working on this post, I totally understood how the whole sequence probably worked.
You see, Bernini incorporated these dolphins into an actual fountain (or fountains) in Italy. So they’re a natural place to start if an ice sculpting pioneer (Weising) wants to design what I believe was probably the first ice fountain ever. He didn’t necessarily look directly at Bernini’s work for inspiration, but it’s probably safe to assume that he at least got his Baroque dolphin ice fountain design from a regular fountain somehow based on a Bernini’s work.
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dolphins in a Bernini fountain in Rome, Fontana del Tritone. Image embedded courtesy of Wikipedia and a Creative Commons license. (I only WISH I’d seen this fountain in person π)
what about with a CNC?
As I’ve talked about on other design posts, my current CNC has a short gantry, so I wouldn’t put my Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design on it normally. However, if I wanted a thinner and flatter version of the dolphin, I definitely would. It would certainly make sculpting all those scales a LOT easier. If I hand sculpted this piece, then I’d have to spend significant time adding all the scales to it after I’ve sculpted the dolphin’s body and smoothed it out.
links and stuff
My Baroque dolphin ice sculpture design also shows up in my post about going beyond ice bowls. After I designed it, it also reminded me of another stylized fish design on the site, the sexy fish. I also have other “normal” dolphin designs: a dolphin and hearts and a double dolphin design.
You could also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. ice sculpting secrets is also on TikTok, although videos there aren’t really tied to posts as much. You can comment on IG and fb as well as below. And if it won’t LET you comment below, then definitely comment on fb and/or IG. Thanks!
