Yesterday, motivated by my work's annual Pumpkin Carving contest and by the fact that today is National Pumpkin Day (no lie!) I turned this...
I've never attempted to sculpt a pumpkin, I generally just carve a 2-D face and call it a day but I was feeling particuarly ambitious, motivated by a mystery prize from work, and wanted to try my hand at sculpting my gourd this year.
...into this!
I went to my local art store at lunch and blindly bought these tools to use. What I found was that it's important for your tools to have a sharp edge to be able to slice through the pumpkin, the wire end sculpting tools and the wood carving knives were my best purchase while the wireloop sgrafitto, though it had the coolest name, was pretty useless in terms of pumkinery.
Next I drew a big scary mouth on the face of my "pumpkin" (which you may have noticed is actually an acron squash) and started carving. I used a carving knife to go along the entire outline of my drawing,
and then started gutting it out with the wire-end sculpting tools until each tooth was free. Then I took the skin off each tooth and shaped them so they'd be wicked scary, carved some squinty eyes and Viola!
My first 3-D punkin!
It was easier than I thought it would be, I think I'm hooked.
Stay tuned for the Pumpkin Carving Contest (this Friday the 28th) entry and results!
Happy National Pumpkin Day of America!!!