Sometimes, when they see my photos of certain sculptures (like the dragon above), a person will ask, “How did you get the color in the ice?” They seem to think that the color emanates from the ice itself, instead of the lighting. Now certainly, some ice IS colored, but that kind of ice has a popsicle look to it because part of the coloring process eliminates the transparent quality of the ice. For the most part, to color ice and still maintain its transparency, you need to use colored lighting.

    So where do you get the colored lighting? The easiest and most flexible option is to use white lights and color it with lighting gels. The lighting gels are available in a very wide color range (see a few of the colors in the photo below) and you can usually get them from lighting companies that work with the theater or film industry. I’ve found that the gel sheets go for $7 or $8 each in our area. The sheets are about 20”x24”.

    So far, I’ve seen three different major brands of gel: Roscolux, Apollo, and Lee (not shown below). Samples of the gels come in the little numbered swatch books that you see below, so that you don’t have to spend as much time going through the gel sheets themselves, looking for the right color.

    Aside from lighting, the gels are great if you need to insert color inside your ice, such as for logos or other designs. Much like the colored sand and gelatin methods, you can add a precisely cut gel from the back of the sculpture and hold it in place by packing snow in behind it. You can also sandwich gels between two pieces of ice; the gels are thin enough so that they don’t usually interfere with the welding process, as long as there’s enough ice around them to weld securely (see the picture at the bottom).

the red in Rudolph’s nose is a gel, sandwiched between two pieces of ice