Pumpkin Carving!

It's that time of year again, when a good number of North Americans prepare for all sorts of bizarre and hilariously entertaining rituals surrounding the end of October. The extent of my Halloween celebration usually matches that for all other holidays, as in not doing anything, but I have a soft spot for carving pumpkins. For reasons unknown to me, pumpkins seem to be my optimal artistic medium. Honestly I'd prefer it be a more lucrative medium, but I suppose I'll take what I can get. Despite the joy carving pumpkins brings me, lately I've been forgetting to do it... I can actually say for certain that since 2005 I've carved two pumpkins, and the only reason I remember that is because both of them were memorable. Ok, actually now I'm remembering that technically that's not true, because I carved two in 2005, but both of them were virtually identical. The concept I went for with those two was some mix of Golem and an angler fish. I wasn't completely thrilled with the outcome (thought it could've been much better), but it nonetheless won a fairly informal competition on campus in addition to making it into the yearly selection (for 2006, inexplicably) on ExtremePumpkins.com, probably one of very few sites dedicated to pumpkin carving. Honestly there are people out there who are much better than I at carving pumpkins, but that's ok with me--I do it because I enjoy it. I don't care if the result is the best or worst pumpkin ever. Enough talk, here's some walk:

Moving on, my latest pumpkin was done last year, and I'm a bit more pleased with how it turned out. One of the things I had in mind was the effect it would have glowing, which came out just as I had hoped.

 

I confess, in order to get it to light up like that I had to use more than a tealight, but getting the walls thin enough for the tiny bit of light a tealight puts out to show through would have compromised the structural integrity. Also, I'd like to point out that while it wouldn't fool even a bad neuroanatomist, I did do my best to represent the major sulci (fissures). A true representation was out of the question, as a simple matter of time! There are way too many sulci in the brain, at least enough in my own to convince me that there are better ways to while away a few hours. Perhaps if I had used a dremel or other power tool, but this was done entirely with good old manual knives. It's not looking like I'm going to have a stab (pun!) at a pumpkin this year, but who knows, maybe some time will present itself.