Don’t just settle for your typical toothy jack ‘o lantern: We’re pushing you to bring out your creative side this halloween. Ever seen those intricately designed pumpkins depicting sculptured realistic faces, leaping animals and castles in relief? Follow these steps to carve out one of these pro-looking pumpkins of your very own.
Scott Cummins, a Texas pumpkin artist, lists these pointers on his website, Pumpkingutter.com. The Daily Lobo tested out his methods in hopes of making all the mistakes you might have made despite having followed the instructions with care. His instructions are as follows, with some supplementary pointers we found useful along the way.
Items you will need:
Ribbon tool (or other flat blade to remove rind, such as a potato peeler),
Knives: a range of sizes for different levels of detail.
Sharpened melon baller, ice cream scoop, or simply your hands. Whatever you prefer to gut a pumpkin with.
Stiff-bristle brush.
Because we did not have all of these specialized tools, we used a vegetable peeler instead of the ribbon tool and a Brillo Pad instead of the stiff-bristle brush.
SELECTION
Choose pumpkins that are relatively heavy for their size, because this is an indicator of a thick rind. A thick rind is ideal, for it will give you more room for error.
You can use any tool to gut the pumpkin, or even leave the guts intact. Whatever you do, remember that maintaining the rind’s thickness is crucial to a successful end result.
When cutting an opening, angle the blade inward, pointing it toward the center of the pumpkin.
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CONCEPTUALIZING
For those who are not so artistically inclined, Cummins writes that the carving-the-rind method is the most forgiving. For any amateur, he suggests that you don’t bite off more than you can chew (figuratively, though consuming large pumpkin chunks is probably a choking hazard).
You can have an idea in mind or a drawing to go off of, but Cummins suggests you allow yourself to depart from your original plan if necessary. He writes that he has done so for each of the hundreds of pumpkins he has carved and has yet to ruin a single one.
First, skin your pumpkin. Use a ribbon tool or any kind of flat blade that could peel off the thin skin layer.
This is very straining on your hands if you are using a simple vegetable peeler, as we were. Sometimes it is helpful to switch off with a knife.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
You will then carve out the general features. Keep in mind that details will come later, so you should exercise caution to keep the rind fairly thick. You can always go back and carve deeper, but you can’t add flesh back in if you go too deep. In this vein, you will want to determine which features will be more prominent.
Leave more rind in these areas, carving facial depressions around them.
Cummins recommends you start by gouging out eye sockets with your ribbon tool or suitable substitute. Place them anywhere you want, but remember to leave a nose bridge in between. Work your way out from here until you have carved the basic features, sans detail.
We can’t emphasize this enough: When in doubt, cut off less than you think. The peeler was also helpful in this stage for shallow removals.
DEFINE
Now that you have something resembling a face, you can add in the preliminary details. Cummins suggests having reference material handy, a face carved by nature to inform your manual creation. For this step, use smaller ribbon tools or others conducive to carving small features, such as X-Acto knives.
Preliminary details include outlining the nose and forming the general slopes and nostrils. Carve mouth details like teeth if you wish, and if your pumpkin is to have eyebrows, Cummins advises you to leave them protruding and carve away the surrounding areas.
This step caused some difficulty for us. When adding basic details, make sure you have a clear picture of what every cut will do to the flesh.
REFINE
Use your stiff brush to clear your pumpkin’s emerging countenance of any debris. Then, use the scouring pad or other mildly abrasive tool to polish away roughness. Because this is an easy step, Cummins writes many novices are apt to overdo it, effectively rubbing the character off.
Your fresh-faced pumpkin is now ready for finer touches such as hair and wrinkles.
The scouring did not seem to do much except moisten the carved surface, so perhaps a stronger variety of steel wool is necessary.
We did not have any smaller tools to add the very last details, so we considered the carving finished after polishing it.
