How lucky I was to finish my pumpkins in time for today’s Halloween display. This year I had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas first until I surfed the web for inspiration. I actually found some material I can use next year.

The weather was cool enough and helped these pumpkins to stay in a good shape for a few days. It was also good I started out quite late this time. We got the pumpkins last Sunday. I was still working on some of the patterns before I could begin to transfer them. On Monday evening I carved my first pumpkin. The following evenings were dedicated to the other pumpkins.

When Ingmar Bergman died last year I thought about dedicating one pumpkin to one of the greatest directors in cinematic history. I tried to create a pattern based on one of his movies, I thought about The 7th Seal or Hour of the Wolf, but then I thought nothing would be more appropriate than a portrait of the master himself. It turned out really well. I’m very happy with the result.

This motive was such a lucky find. Originally I was just looking for ideas relating to George Orwell’s 1984, and got reminded of Shepard Fairey‘s work who impressed me with his Orwell book covers, Obama posters, and his other propaganda style obey posters and stencils before. I found this ‘obey frank’ stencil here, and thought it was just perfect and almost already made for my pumpkin. A few minor adjustments and I was ready to carve Donnie Darko’s Frank.

My third pumpkin was dedicated to Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable Clockwork Orange and my costume this year. It turned out well although I once lost a bit of track in the facial area.

With these more complex patterns of 3 shades it’s nearly impossible to work with a ‘poke-along-the-outline’ technique. I found it very difficult to trace the outline with a pen, too–pressing hard enough, or using transfer paper. Standard carbon transfer paper doesn’t stick on the pumpkin surface. A blue textile transfer paper worked better before, but not well enough. I found the best way to transfer a pattern is to print it out, perhaps in 4 tiles, then cut the carving areas out with a scalpel or sharp blades. Paper is easy to cut, and such a template will make it much easier to transfer. All you have to do is fill the holes with a sharpie and then carve out the filled areas. Spray paint might work there, too. Maybe I will try that next year.

The last pumpkin was inspired by M.C. Escher’s tesselations, in this example his lizards. Actually, it was my first pumpkin I carved as a warm-up piece on Monday. I tried to save it later, but without much success. I made so many mistakes with this one: It all started when I cleaned the interior of the pumpkin out. I didn’t remove enough from the inside, so the wall I had to carve ended much thicker than I wanted it to be. Mistake #2 was the transfer. I first used my old method that worked alright for simple one-sided patterns. But it didn’t work well  in 360 degrees around the pumpkin-shape. The lizards didn’t match up properly, and I tried to fix it manually with a pen. In the end I got nothing but a chaotic pen-drawing on the pumpkin’s surface that didn’t work at all.

So I started over and cut out a single lizard to use as a template. This worked much better because a single lizard fit much better on the pumpkin surface and made it easy to trace along its outlines without having to use transfer paper, pushing pens hard or poking needles. With the existing drawing the outlines turned even more chaotic and difficult to identify. I could hardly see which lizard to carve as a hole, shave off from the surface or leave intact.

The first test didn’t look great at all, you couldn’t recognize any of the lizards. Yesterday I worked on this again and completed the 360 degree circumference. I could improve the outcome somewhat, and it didn’t look too bad after all. However, it didn’t look as I intended. Next year I will have to try another one. :)

Happy Halloween!