Pumpkin carvings

[autobodyman]

I didn't know if I should post these, I've been using Carvewrights bandwidth with mostly non-carvewright carvings. If I shouldn't be posting this stuff I assume someone will let me know (or pull the posts)?

Last year I found some of Ray Villafane's pumpkin carvings online, ordered some clay carving tools (from Dick Blick I think) but didn't get them till after Halloween, so thought I'd give it a try this year.

Been carving some pumpkins the last few evenings.
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This orange pumpkin took me about 2½ hours to carve, the pumpkin was a little punky/stringy and not real thick.
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This white pumpkin had a really tough skin on it, had to use the wife's cheese grater to get it off. The meat was a lot more dense and thicker too. Took me about 4 hours to carve this one. I've got 5 more pumpkins, I don't know if I will get the rest carved by Halloween. Sure is a bunch of time for stuff that's going to rot in a fairly short time. Can't even scan these with the carvewright (at least I can't figure a way :D )

What do you think?

Thanks ~Mike

[ibewiggin]

That is amazing! You have some real talent.

[lynnfrwd]

Can't even scan these with the carvewright (at least I can't figure a way :D )


LOL...where's bergerud when you need him.


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[autobodyman]

This one took me quite a bit longer, not really sure why. I guess cause it's quite a lot bigger, also spent a lot of time undercutting the brain and the teeth.
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For taking so long (over 6 hours on this one) I'm really not that thrilled with it.

We had our first hard freeze yesterday (pretty late for us) and the leaves that were all on my maple the night before were on the ground this morning, looked like a good spot to shoot the pumpkins (didn't have this last carving done yet).
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Only 4 days to Halloween, not sure how many more I will get done.

What do you think of them?

Thanks ~Mike

[lawrence]

Man, those are AWESOME.

If you saw my post about the 3d scanner that would get a 3d picture for you. (all you need is a laser line level, a computer webcam, and the free david 3d software)

Very nice carvings,
Lawrence

[eromran]

Those are so cool its amazzing just looking at them trying to see all the detail. I agree with Lawrence it would be great if you could get a 3d scan of some of these to preserve what you have done. If nothing else when your done with these you could cut off just the face to scan

[b.sumner47]

Mike, Very nice, Indeed. Are you showing some of Zippy's family? Capt Barry

[autobodyman]

Thanks guys. I wish one of you with the 3D scanning set up was close enough to me to scan them. It does sound interesting maybe someday I'll look into getting the necessary stuff. As for cutting the faces off to scan in the carvewright, I don't think that would work, they are probably 3" deep from high point (noses in most cases) to the low point of the curve (the edge of the scraped off part). Not to mention I think they may be a bit soft for scanning.

Well I was going to do 3 more but spent most of Saturday carving these two, decided that was enough of that.


I call this first one "What do you mean catch, I don't have any hands"
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Sprayed this one with a can of satin poly, still a bit shiny, I am spraying all of them today with some automotive clearcoat with flex additive and a lot of flattening agent, should come out a bit less shiny, hopefully.

This one was terribly stringy/punky, had his teeth all done and was scraping out behind the teeth and well you can see most of his teeth didn't make it.

I call this one "Sumo Brain"
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This pumpkin was kind of an odd shape and had a pretty severe crease, so I used the crease for his mouth, not that thrilled with this one but still took a lot of time.




Tomorrow after the clearcoat is dry/setup I will try to get a group photo of all of them together.

What do you think?
Thanks ~Mike

[b.sumner47]

Mike , Those are great ! I'm laughing my head off.

Capt Barry

[SharonB]

Mike... I'm glad you weren't at our pumpkin carving/decorating contest as you would have walked away with all the prizes.

[DocWheeler]

Mike,

As usual, you create great projects.

When you said that you wished that someone was close that had a scanner, I had a flash recall of something.
Someone long ago mentioned using a colored liquid to submerge the item in so it would create a gray-scale photo.
It would seem that a darker liquid would work on the light-colored pumpkin - just a thought.

[autobodyman]

Thought I'd post the last of this. They've all been sprayed with 3 coats of automotive clearcoat with a flex additive and a strong dose of flattening agent.
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Pumpkins grouped in my yard under my Maple tree that lost all it's leaves. These pumpkins took me a combined carving time of around 24 hours, a lot of work for stuff that's going to rot. I doubt I'll do this many again, maybe one or two next year, possibly none. I may at some point try to make a wooden pumpkin then carve that, that way I'd never have to carve a real one again.

Here are a few shots of them setup in the wife's office (front of our house)
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I ordered a 16 foot RGB LED light strip, cut two lengths to fit the width of the door and installed two controllers. I used the remote to make them orange, unplugged one of them then changed the other to green and lowered the intensity a bit to highlight the pumpkins. I found both lights being orange made the pumpkins look to orange (First threw the glass photo) , and both green didn't shadow the low carved area's very well.

Having them behind the locked door solved a problem I had a few years ago someone smashing one of the pumpkins we had left out front.

No more pumpkins for at least a year, I promise.

What do you think?

Thanks ~Mike

[chebytrk]

You da man!

[jpaluck]

Yep..def go with wood for next year..those are so nice to rot.

[atauer]

Geez...

Those make the 2D cutouts that I did with my son and my niece look like...

Well, they look like mutilated pumpkins is what mine look like.

Awesome job. Definitely use a different medium next year. Those are way to nice to rot.

[lynnfrwd]

Sounds like some GREAT new projects for the PatternDepot. I keep thinking STL slices...