Carving seven pumpkins will cause your wrists to be sore.

I like carving pumpkins. This year we got lots of pumpkins and no one wanted to help me carve them, so I did it all myself.

the smallest pumpkin was this little white pumpkin I found. His face was drawn on a whim, because my dad told me the other faces weren't mean enough.



this little guy was initially a little less piggy looking, but I thought the nose went with the shape of his "body" and the eyes.



this little guy is for my uncle Ernie. He watched me carve the pumpkins, but didn't want to do one himself. When I was doing the other faces he kept trying to get me to do this one. So finally he drew it for me and I carved it for him.



this pumpkin is my least favorite. I just couldn't get anything straight or symmetrical or cut cleanly. So, I finished her and moved on. My uncle Ernie would howl like a ghost anytime he saw her.



this guy was one of my first drawings. I've learned from this guy (and the next two) that when I carve away flesh but leave some behind (like his eyes and his teeth), I have to do some serious carving. They recommend scraping the inside of the pumpkin down to 1" width, and though that's good in thought, it didn't really work for me. Most of these guys were so stringy on the inside that when I would try and thin the walls down it would just pull clumps out. Anyway, I know that next year I should put more time/effort into that thinning down of the walls. He's cute, though, with his big toothy grin. That's his spiky hairdo on top.



this next guy was another of my first drawings. They translated ok to the pumpkins, I guess that's something to work on too. Anyway, I like him, he's kinda surly looking. He has curly hair there on top, but you can't see it too well because I didn't carve deep enough. Oh well, maybe next year.



this last guy is the biggest one, and one of my favorites. He didn't look as good as I had hoped (that whole depth thing again) but I still like him a lot. I should give these guys names.



family portraits!



so there they are. They aren't anything particularly spectacular, but I like them. My next post might involve pictures of them being blown up. We'll see.

autumn in denver

It's snowing here, folks. The accumulation is slight, however, it's been snowing all day. It's actually quite pretty snow. It's light and flaky, not heavy and ugly. Just thought you'd appreciate some snow on October 17th, 2006.