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Snow Leopard details Parking lot snow. The Duluth Zoo had a "Zoo Year's Eve" celebration on New Years Eve. They built a plywood box four feet wide and eight feet tall and filled it with parking lot snow. They had left me thinking I might get some man made snow from one of our ski hills but it was not to be. One of the nice things about the snow was that it had a dingy car exhaust color that was quite similar to the coats of real snow leopards. The rain from the previous day had turned the top four inches into ice which I had to chop off. The clay model I had made had the smaller leopard sprawled out but the four feet width of my block forced me to give her stubby legs. I started whittling my block down at 1:30 on New Years and finished by 5:30. I had to dig out the snow from my rectangular block pretty fast so I had to be careful not to remove any that might be needed for any of either leopard's appendages. Because this was purely a matter of subtraction with no sticky snow available because it had dipped down to the twenties I would not be able to add anything later. I also had to finish by the time the fireworks went off and the zoo closed. As you can see the appendages and tail are too fat. I had to be a little careful of the tail because it could have broken off. Also because their were lumps of ice in the snow I had to carve carefully so as not to pop them out of the softer matrix and pock marking them. It is much easier putting the right contours on when the snow is warm and pliable. |