Ok, that all done with, 2nd ~ I thought I might show off the pumpkins Tony carved at this year's Harvest Fest. Well, the pumpkins he carved that I got pictures of before they got carted off by happy pumpkin purchasers. (Yes, people really DO pay other people to carve them a funky, off-beat original pumpkin which I think they sometimes enter into contests as their own, but hey, I guess they DID pay for them :-D)
All right, first off, I have to say, Tony is a great fan of ExtremePumpkins.com
& regularly checks out the site for new & fascinatingly disgusting pumpkins to carve. ( He swears he's gonna enter one of his contests some time...) Since this Fest was a family affair, he stuck to the least offensive examples & still maintained high shock value. (It's amazing how routinely people are disgusted by even the remote SUGGESTION of pukery & cannibalism.)
I would like to make this suggestion; Do the Puker Pumpkin, put him on a tray, then put the candy for the kids INSIDE the pumpkin, and don't forget to mix some of it up in the *puke* as well. Shock value-added ~ :-D.
These two pumpkins were all-time favorites, it's a good thing he was using a router, jigsaw, & a drywall knife, or he would have been at it forever.
We teased him about not using a chainsaw to carve, and he was actually bummed he couldn't; apparently it would have been too loud for the crowd. But it is interesting, every single time he turned on a tool to carve with, he immediately got 50 - 60 onlookers, literally within just minutes. (So guess how he started every carving :-D)
Funny thing about that Brother Bear one, little kids kept coming up all day long to stick their hands in it.
This one was my favorite use of melons.... I mean uhh.. you know, those itty bitty pumpkin/gourd/miniature-what-the-heck-am-I-gonna-do-with-THIS thingy's. He was supposed to look like he was getting his eyes squeeged out.
I think it would have been more effective to have flayed him as well, but you know, when carving a bazillion pumpkins in a day, time is of the essence ~
Tony's biggest piece of advice? Draw it on with a dry-erase marker, then cut OUTSIDE the lines. Far less clean-up afterward. Also, that jigsaw ( or a sawz-all would be equally effective) is ESSENTIAL! Use it to make all of your major design element cuts. Taking off the skin to add depth can really liven up a carving as well, and either the router or a chisel can be used ( with stop gaps) to acheive the effect well. And finally, no matter how good or bad, easy or difficult the final carving is, it's really the IDEA that counts. As long as you get your IDEA across ( and its an idea worth GETTING across) you have acheived pumpkin carving SUCCESS!
Happy Harvest!!!
