How lifelike can I make a brown pelican ice sculpture look?
updated 2/20/22
a realistic brown pelican ice sculpture?
Yeah, I don’t know how realistic it is to try for realism via ice sculpting. But I’d still like to find out how close I can come to creating a lifelike brown pelican ice sculpture.
Of course, it’s not just going to be the sculpting. The lighting will play a huge part. And the lighting may well be the toughest part. Brown lighting? Uh-oh 
Fun fact: for my latest brown pelican ice sculpture, I’ll be using an ice block from Pelican Ice. Do you think that will help it look even more pelicanny? (totally not a word)
my standard brown pelican ice sculpture
Big surprise, I’ve made a lot of brown pelican ice sculptures. Louisiana is the Pelican State, after all, with the brown pelican as the state bird. (I’m not quite sure why there are white pelicans on the state flag though 🤔) But the design above is pretty much my goto design when it comes to brown pelicans. As you can see, it dates to 2009. Before that, I was somewhat less adept at sculpting browns. A good design matters A LOT. Having a bad design is like having a poorly drawn map to a party, not fun.
Driving around on the Gulf Coast, there are lots of places to see browns. And I’ve stopped a number of times to watch and take pics, especially when they’re fishing. But I’m going to go with a lazy, non-fishing version to start 😉
a good start on realism
As you can see, I have a decent start in the realistic department. Brown pelicans really do sit around on old wood pilings sticking out from the water. And they kind of even stand on them like the one in my design. But I may need to tweak my brown pelican design a little to fit the way they seem to more commonly stand. My version is designed to be a little easier to sculpt, since it fits in an ice block better. My pelican also has stubby-pelican-leg disease. I see that a lot with pelican ice sculptures.
no flying pelicans for now
The brown pelican ice sculpture above was at Governor John Bel Edwards’ first inauguration party. (There’s a “boy-am-I-stupid” story that goes along with that sculpture, but maybe another time ) Two big problems: little, stubby wings and the line connecting the wings. Brown pelicans have very big wings, so those look wrong. And weld lines are tough to hide, so I’m going to think on that before I try something like this as a fine ice art piece. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, any brown pelican ice sculptures that I try to make into ice art will be of the flightless and lazy variety, for now.
didn't I say no flying pelicans?!
This one was at Governor John Bel Edwards’ second inauguration party. (Does that sound like bragging now? Maybe name dropping? 
) It seems I’ve kinda fixed the wing size problem, but the weld lines (where pieces of the sculpture are frozen together) are still evident. So, even though I’ve improved a little in the last four years, still not doing a flying one as a fine ice art piece yet.
...and now I've started the brown pelican ice sculpture
Of course, I’d already started my tiger head piece. But it’s currently stored in a backup freezer because I had to move it. And to be honest, I was a little stuck on it. Also, I need to work on its background.
You can see above though, that I’ve officially started on my brown pelican ice art. Things were going very well, but then I realized that I didn’t totally understand pelican wing anatomy. So I had to go back and do a little research.
so after some research on pelican wings...
I unstuck myself! (On the pelican, not the tiger. Yet.) In fact, I’m getting ready to start really photographing this piece very soon. But he needs feet first. (See how I strategically don’t show his feet in the pic above? ) I probably need another day or so on him. However, I’ll be working on it tomorrow. I thought that I would have events tomorrow, but Hurricane Delta sadly went to Lake Charles instead 😢 They REALLY didn’t need another storm this year!
Usually, I have to take photos for a bit and then see what I still have to fix, since the camera sees things that I gloss over when looking at it. And I also have to face the significant challenge of lighting it something like a pelican’s natural colors. But I may have near final photos this weekend. We shall see! (last update: 10/9/20)
guess what? this is as far as I got!
Oops, I haven’t updated in a LONG time. But here’s what happened. I got this pic and some other similar ones. I was really excited about how it turned out, but I thought I could do a little better. I also wanted to play with some special effects and stuff. I even had a back up sculpture going since I had a news segment where it worked really well to start another.
But then life got in the way and I had to put this sculpture away for a little while.
So, fast forward to late summer 2021! Uh oh. Hurricane Ida 
I thought I had this and another sculpture in a safe place, stored at an ice house. They had generators and are viewed as critical infrastructure, but that wasn’t enough and the sculpture got damaged beyond repair! 😢 So I’ll have to try again if I want more pics. But I got REALLY close to my initial vision, so it’s a big success in my mind! Let me know if you agree!
