The Art of Pumpkin Carving, Part 2

Now that Halloween is around the corner, I've gotten around to carving my pumpkins and here's what I ended up with:

These little guys were pretty easy to make. I ordered a dozen vampire teeth from Amazon, bought some little pumpkins and cut out mouth shapes then stuck the teeth in. They didn't last as long as I hoped and was pretty grossed out to find the mouths were black. Needless to say, I didn't recover the teeth...

If you want to make these guys, the shape for the small and big mouth can be found here. The teeth won't look right if the lines aren't straight so be careful with that.

Also, I think mine didn't last so long because I didn't clean them out. The only hole is the mount but it should be big enough to get some of the insides out of these small gourds. 

I thought it was fun that Assassin's Creed 3 was coming out right around Halloween so I decided to pay homage to the game. Last year, I did Portal pumpkins so this was along the same vein. Plus, I've been working on powering through Assassin's Creed 2 so I can do the second part of my series (btw - I adore Ezio. Can I just say that?) The pumpkin was very easy but having such a big piece in the middle with little support was my downfall and when the biology started setting in, the middle caved. I'm glad I snapped this before that happened!

I saw a picture for a Dark Knight Joker pumpkin and I knew I had to do that. I've only really scraped one pumpkin before so I wasn't sure how it would go but I think it turned out really well. The picture I was going off had a variety of shades on the face. Some areas were black so I didn't touch those. Every other lighter area, I did a base scrape. From there, I scraped deeper on the light areas and left the medium ones with a fair amount of thickness. I think the key here would be to constantly light the pumpkin and see how it's going.   I think it would have looked better if I'd gone a little deeper but it still turned out pretty cool. 

The last pumpkin may be hard to figure out if you don't know what you're looking for but it's the Delorean from Back to the Future with it's flame trails. To be honest, I was a little pumpkined out by the point and was preoccupied with the World Series (GO GIANTS!!!!) so I really phoned this one in. This is basically the image I was going off of. Again... phone that one in...

I also made a couple of tweaks to the Heath pumpkin. This is the picture I used for that one. There's is definitely more angular but like I said, I'm still a pumpkin-scraper-in-training. Hopefully, next year I can nail it down because I already have some amazing things I want to try. 

The important thing for me is to try to do something fun and creative. Face pumpkins are cool but I've made dozens of them. I didn't start doing images until a few years ago so I'm probably going to stick with it for a while. 

The Art of Pumpkin Carving

With Halloween coming up, I thought it would be fun to have some relative posts. For those of you who don't know, I dabble in the arts recreationally. I love painting and sculpture but really don't take as much time to do it as I should. That makes Halloween extra fun for me - I like being creative with my pumpkins and try to push the skill and nerdy limits each year.

I have no idea what I'm going to do yet but you better believe it will be amazing and probably have some sort of geek cred. Here are some of my past masterpieces:

An ode to my favorite team and Alma Mater

I clearly like Portal...

I think anyone can make fun pumpkins if you take the time to be thoughtful about it. Here are some of my tips for easier pumpkin carving:

• Be mindful when picking your pumpkin - get one that is big enough to easily fit your image and has a flat face.
• Make it easier on yourself - when cleaning your pumpkin, do extra scraping on the inside wall of the side you are going to carve. You can easily thin out the wall which will make carving a lot easier. 
• Have your image ready. Print out or rough sketch your image and then try to trace it over to the pumpkin. It's pretty tough to free hand on a round surface, especially if you're not artistic. This will give you a better idea of how it's going to fit too.
• TOOLS - I can't state this enough. Pumpkin carving kits can be helpful but it's likely that the tools are cheap and will fall apart. Get a variety of pumpkin specific kits. Amazon is a good spot to look since people leave reviews. Also don't be afraid to think outside the box here. I often use kitchen knives, pottery tools, regular tools - anything I can get my hands on to make the job easier.
• Be creative - scary faces are fun but I love that my pumpkins were unique. More and more people are changing up their pumpkins from using multiple pumpkins in one piece, painting, or using glow sticks to incorporate fun colors. If you're not creative but want to do something fun - search around the web for fun ideas.

I really loved last year's pumpkins, but I know I need to step out of the box this time. Any suggestions for me? With certain video game releases this month and movies that I loved this summer, I have an idea or two...

Some of us Cinnamon Geeks are going to get together to carve our pumpkins later this month. Something tells me you'll be hearing about it.