Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Pumpkin Art - Pumpkin carving




I saw a pumpkin carved this way about 10 years ago and have been carving our pumpkin this way ever since. I can't take credit for the scary one which my daughter did with her uncle on a visit to the southwest...inspired by a NewYorker cover.

The pumpkins are carved with woodcarving tools to a depth of about 1/4" after a pattern is drawn. You have to have a sense of negative and positive spaces but usually the lines are just thickened to about 1/8 to 1/4" and all the rest are dug out unless you want a large dark area. Then you scrape out the insides to thin out the drawing so the candle can illuminate the art. You have to scrape it until it's fairly thin. A large soup spoon works very well. Try a simple design first. The results are fairly breathtaking though time consuming...usually take me about 2 hours or more to do one.

Just some observations and comments on posting photos. I decided to go back to posting photos with Blogger instead of PhotoBucket. I can't seem to control the size of the photos with PB even when re-sizing them on the PB site. I don't have control of placement with Blogger but at least I can specify size small,med or large and not have copy superimposed on photos.

I also noticed that the blog displays differently using browsers other than Firefox. Explorer places all the links on the bottom of the blog while FF puts it on the side. Opera is similar to FF.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very cool pumpkins! I always want to try something new with them and then halloween arrives and there doesn't seem to be any extra time!

7:50 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Awesome! I love both "Scream" and the scary skull one that your daughter did... now I just need to find some wood carving tools of my own. :)

I haven't tried using Photobucket on my blog photos, but I have a devil of a time with it when I post pictures to the GardenWeb forums. Sometimes they seem to not resize at all, sometimes they resize in the wrong way, etc.

9:09 AM  
Blogger Ki said...

Hi Sandy,
I agree, there's never enough time these days - I can't seem to fit everything in. Try a simple design first so you don't get too bogged down. Linoleum block print tools should work just fine if you don't want to spring for a woodcarving set. Thanks for writing.

Hey, Blackswamp_girl, yeah its easiest if you have a good woodcarving tool set. The tools with the cutting edge shaped like a U seem to work the best but I use about 3-5 different ones depending if I want to make a line or scoop out large areas.
Photobucket is weird. I tried using all the resizing tools but the posted pictures don't seem to change in size. I've only posted about 3 pics on GW forums and they posted ok but very large. At least they come up w/o having to click a button so its ok for me. Thanks for the comment.

9:48 AM  
Blogger Ki said...

idaho gardener, the anemones are a delight and becoming an obessession trying to collect all the different varieties...a bit tetched in the head that way. Keep blogging. Thanks for writing.

4:35 AM  
Blogger Rogers Place said...

That skeleton one is just AWESOME.

5:10 PM  
Blogger EYElene said...

I am doing a fall themed photo shoot with a model this Sunday.
Would love to have her holding a carved out pumpkin.
If anyone would like to have high quality professional pictures taken of their art please contact asap:
EYEleneProductions@gmail.com

2:11 PM  

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