Simon Beck’s Snowshoe Murals: Drawing a Design by Walking

From ground level, a snowshoe print is just a mark left behind. Seen from above, thousands of carefully placed prints can become a star, a snowflake or an intricate web of geometry. That change of perspective is at the heart of Simon Beck's snow art.

Great Big Story's short film Art at Altitude: Snow Murals in the Mountains, published in February 2016, introduces the artist and the extraordinary scale of his work. The finished design is made by walking across snow, with snowshoes doing the drawing.

How do you draw something too big to see at once?

Beck's background in mapmaking and orienteering helps explain his method. A drawing starts with measurements: directions, paced distances and a framework of lines. In his 2025 Art2Life interview, he discusses working with a compass and treating the process like mapmaking in reverse — transferring an idea onto the ground.

The early layout needs concentration. Once the main geometry is established, repeated walking fills parts of the pattern. Snow depth and condition affect how much effort that takes, so “20 miles every day” is too rigid a description of a practice shaped by individual designs and weather.

The photograph is part of the work

A higher viewpoint brings the separate tracks together into a readable whole. Light matters, too: low sun can cast shadows in the compressed snow and make the pattern easier to distinguish. Beck discusses those changing shadows and the need to photograph a drawing before fresh snow or other disturbance erases it in the same interview.

That makes this an unusual kind of artwork to encounter. A walker can be standing inside a small part of a design while someone looking from above sees the complete arrangement. Both people are looking at the same snow, but they are reading it at different scales.

An idea that kept growing

In a 2023 interview with Nice News, Beck recalled making his first snow drawing for fun in 2004 near his home at Les Arcs in France. He also described creating drawings in sand. The materials change, but the need to work within a temporary surface remains.

Part of the pleasure is knowing that the next snowfall can make the same place available for a different drawing. The photograph preserves one arrangement; the ground does not have to keep it forever.

Try a small version of the idea

You do not need a mountainside to explore patterns. In a permitted, level area of snow on solid ground, sketch a simple design first: a star, a spiral or your initials. Think about where you will enter and leave so your approach does not cross the part you want to photograph.

Choose a safe viewpoint already available to you, such as a window overlooking a garden. Compare the close view with the wider one. Which lines stay visible, and which disappear? It is a cheerful exercise in seeing, even if the result lasts only until the next set of footprints.

For sculptures instead of drawings, browse these 30 snowman ideas. For a different human figure against a broad frozen landscape, revisit Katrina Lazzarotto's mountain-lake skating film.

A much smaller pattern with a practical purpose appears in Finn’s backyard snow maze, where cleared paths gave a little dog room to explore.

For a closer look at one distinctive creation, explore Simon Beck’s snow dragon in Siberia.