I've been fooling around with ice trying to get that really translucent look like real ice. If anyone has any suggestions or has done ice before, I'm looking for that photo realistic quality. This is as close as I have come so far.

Requires work and experience. Been doing Ice sculptures for a few years now and every time I do one, I pick up new skills and throw away old experiences. All I can tell you is to start with a good base and also to have a good Ice texture (I have several that I either created or collected over the years) to blend with. One of my favorite filters that I use more then often is EyeCandy 3's Glass filter (free if you click here). Also, to start the base of the sculpture, I like using G'MIC's Gradient Norm preset. What really requires experience is working with reflections, but for basic ice sculptures, you can skip that step for now.

Below's a link of something that you may like Drac.

http://gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=921#p9757

Mister Krolsky, I bow to your obvious mastery of the ice. That was absolutely breathtaking. I can only hope to get that good someday. I'll check out the Eye Candy glass filter tomorrow when I get cracking. Thanks for the tip and btw I would love to compare ice textures cuz I have quite a few myself. here's the two I used for this one.

Below are crops of the textures that I use quite often. I hesitate to directly share them here since I can't remember where I got them (many years ago), but will PM them to you if you want me too (I like to give credit where credit's due for art that I didn't originally create such as textures or any other thing).

That is really smart Drac