Fractal Blog

It's the middle of winter and icy pursuits are all the rage. There's an (artificial) ice rink set up at Docklands. And we spent the afternoon watching this ice sculpture being created. Fortunately it was sunny (from a spectator point-of-view) and cold (from an ice-sculpture point-of-view).

At first there were only huge blocks of ice. These needed putting into place very carefully, using raw muscle power, a chainsaw and a sort of sanding (icing?) tool.

It's going to be a big sculpture.

Next, the outline is sketched into the ice with a very sharp etching tool. This only took a few seconds. It's going to be a lion!

Now comes the hard work, using the chainsaw (again) and a fine drill. Three sculptors worked on this for about an hour and a half. Slowly the lion is taking shape by removing all the non-lion bits from the ice.

Finally, the end product! Isn't it gorgeous? And we watched from start to finish. Well, with breaks in our favourite wine-and-cheese shop, and in our favourite pub. Purely to warm up, of course.