My First Jack-O-Lantern
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
Somehow, I made it to my 35th year without ever having carved a pumpkin.
I’m not exactly sure how that is. I haven’t actively avoided it. I’ve seen people carving around me. Last year I even saw a million pumpkins being carved at the Boston common. When my band did Halloween shows, I remember Jason carving pumpkins. Yet, for some reason, I was never around to pick up a knife. I don’t know why that is.
Since Emily is a huge fan of Halloween, this year would be different. After a trip to the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago, everyone was going to be carving some faces. Now, what kind of pumpkin should I do? I thought about a pirate. Or maybe something computer related. Is it web 2.0 if it has rounded corners and spelled like Pumpkn? Decisions, decisions. Then, as fate would have it, I saw these instructions appear in my RSS feeds. Perfect.
Who cares that I’d never carved a pumpkin before? What does it matter that aside from some smelly clay during a game of Cranium I have no sculpting experience whatsoever? Who needs talent when you’ve got enthusiasm? This wouldn’t be the first time I bit off more than I could chew.
First things first. I needed an inspiration and this picture was it. Emily had sent me this picture from her camera phone a couple of years ago and I always liked it. It was super silly, but awfully cute. I was sure that carved into a pumpkin it could be pretty scary, too.
Working from a printout of the image, I removed the brightest portions of the image.
Unlike a normal jack-o-lantern. You’ve got to carve your gourd in a dark room with a light inside the pumpkin. You aren’t carving like a normal sculpture. To make items lighter, you have to carve away the pumpkin. To make them darker, you leave them thick. This often leads to things being inverted. Stuff that should stick out is going back in, etc. But not always. It’s really a bit of peculiar optical illusion and a little tricky at first. In fact, I wasn’t sure it was going well at all until I saw this photo as I was carving. It looked way better in the image than it did in person.
The fact that it looked so good in the camera led to the brilliant idea of carving with one eye closed to see the image in 2D. I could then focus on the contrast without worrying about depth.
It really didn’t take as long as I might have thought. A couple of hours all told. Initially, I was trying to keep the subject of my carving a surprise. It was quite funny when the kids would ask me what I was making. “Is it a witch?” “It looks like a monster.” All I could reply was, “Sometimes….”
The final product is far from perfect, but I think you can definitely see the likeness. I’d like to try again next year, but I’d choose my photo differently. This image has a lot of fine detail in the areas where her nose is scrunched up. That area is really key to making it recognizable and was extremely difficult to get right. In fact, I don’t think that I did. The areas between light and dark were so thin that it became a bit of a mishmash. Coupled with the somewhat unusual expression, even things that are intentional can look somewhat like a mistake.
Emily-O-Lantern joins the others in the front window.
I have to say, the best moment was as soon as I put the pumpkin in the window trick-or-treaters walking by started noticing and taking pictures. They were talking to each other. “Look at that face!” “I wonder who it is.” “Do you still have your camera?” I certainly wasn’t prepared for that, but I have to admit it kind of made the whole thing worth while.
Happy Halloween!
