This sculpture was a group effort between me, Abhijit, and Brandon. We met up in a park and, seeing the benches lining the sidewalk, we decided to make a dude on a couch, roughly inline with the benches. The snow in the park had already been pretty stomped down, so we weren’t sure we’d have enough to make something big, but thankfully Brandon brought a shovel, and our snow pile grew soon enough.
Over two hours, one person was pretty much always adding snow to our main sculpture area while the other two sculpted. We started by making the base of the couch, then built up the thinner back carefully. Once we were confident in the structural integrity, we started carving out details of the couch’s surface. One of our best ideas was digging away at the bottom to make it look more like the couch rested on corner legs. Before we started on the dude, we took pictures of the couch itself just in case we broke it in the process of adding the dude.
We started by adding a bunch of snow in the rough shape of a person, then slowly started carving away at the limbs first, and as they gained some separation from the couch surface, the whole sculpture took on more realism. Eventually, Brandon and I finished off the torso, and Abhijit finished off the head separately, which he delicately placed on top. For a final bit of adornment, we broke off some pieces of sticks for the eyes, lent the dude Brandon’s hat, and put a nearby found empty beer can in the dude’s hand. By this point, all of our fingers and toes were fully numb, so we took our pictures quickly!
