Carving An Intricate Ice Sculpture From Start To Finish | By Hand | Architectural Digest

my name is shintaro okamoto and this is how I turn a 200 pound block of ice into a cockatoo [Music] first I sketched an outline of the sculpture on a block of ice with a small pick I'm looking at the profile of the design first ice is a really funny material it's Crystal Clear so it's void of color and Shadow so we have to rely a lot on Silhouette and think about how light can refract and to try to manipulate that to create our work it's a very special ice The Carving ice that's made through a process with two important points one is One Direction freezing where freezes bottom up so all the impurities and kind of air bubbles that that builds up in the process of freezing stays on the surface and two freezing agitating water moving water and that allows to kind of constantly release those air bubbles away that I cut a rough shape with a chainsaw off the shelf chainsaw blades have this little Notch an extra metal piece behind each blade to prevent the Kickbacks for cutting wood but for ice we take those away because with those on he kind of clogs the blade and ends up hiding the the cutting blade it makes it harder to cut so it's one of the common modification that the ice Carvers do so with the chainsaw I carve all around it and basically take out all the negative space and get the actual design the punched out [Music] foreign [Music] about two-thirds of the work is done with chainsaw it's amazing how much finesse you can get out of such a brute tool once the Contour is set I'm staying on with the chainsaw still but now it's time to start shaping the sculpture I'm gonna then start thinking about in respect to the overall thickness of the sculpture proportionately where would the head key how wide would the head be thinking about the angles of the wingspan spreading out really just start to form the animal as I'm carving out and establishing the 3D volume of the sculpture it's very blocky but the volume is there foreign [Music] so the next tool that I usually pick up will be either the chisels or the chippers this tool is called a chipper this is where if I'm carving an animal I think about Anatomy I know I think about you know where where is the Skull and where is the muscle connects to and where all things going to come together and connect and this is when the sculpture starts to take a life of its own foreign and it's fun because I'm personally a big big fan of hand tools [Music] I first encountered ice carving through my father who learned the craft during his training as a sushi chef in Japan I got trained in kind of an old world technique of appreciating and respecting the sharp hand tools once that's done I think I'm more than halfway through I'm back to par tools at this point the first thing then I pick up will be the Burrs it's basically a conical special bit that goes onto a die grinder that's got tiny tiny teeth all around [Music] and that basically further refines the overall shape and really just Smooths it all out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] once this stage is done I'm ready for final detailing and I usually just touch two other tools to do that one is a knife bit on a die grinder that establishes the deepest creases of the forms [Music] thank you [Music] then I finish it with needle bit that has the skinniest of tips and that can establish the smallest of the eye details to be clients to all the feather details we can spend as much time as we want with that however level of detailing we want to put into [Music] foreign [Music] sometimes to really heighten the clarity of the ice after everything's finished working with ice there's inevitable understanding that it's a passing ephemeral constantly changing and melting and and and gone ultimately when our sculpture leaves the studio that's when he really takes on it's just true life more than anything it's so rewarding to see the sculpture be experienced by people and and see them be fascinated in such unfamiliar scale and level of details and then to see it melting away it's it's incredibly humbling as it melts and you know deforms and disappears that first impression stays in their memory [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Architectural Digest

Views: 95,516

Keywords: amazing art, amazing ice sculpture, amazing ice sculptures, amazing ice talent, architectural digest, architectural digest by hand, art made of ice, best ice sculpture, by hand, chainsaw ice sculpting, ice artwork, ice sculpting, ice sculptor, ice sculpture, ice sculptures, ice structures, incredible ice sculpture, professional ice sculptor, sculptures, shintaro okamoto, shintaro okamoto sculpture, snow sculpture

Id: PF28rzT0UTY

Length: 8min 58sec (538 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022