Pumpkin Carving 2022

My Cheshire Cat (2022), Patterson

More and more I enjoy pealing the skin off a pumpkin to create layers of value for my jack-o-lanterns. The deeper you go, the lighter that area becomes. Completely cutout areas will be bright yellow, while the uncut (skin) areas will have the darkest value. A bonus feature of these shaded pumpkins is that they look good (unlit) in the daylight.

Here's my Cheshire Cat pumpkin. It looks much better with the ears punched through. I also love how leaving the skin around the eyes, nose, and mouth creates an outline, further emphasizing those features.

I carved triangles and diamonds in the lid and on the back side to create chimneys to allow heat to escape. If you carve your lid somewhat symmetrically, then you can rotate the lid to allow for ventilation.

Frankie (2021), Patterson

My favorite pumpkin from last year has to be my Frankenstein head. The lid made for great looking monster hair. By cutting slits in the top edge of the opening the hair was further reflected onto the face, and a larger slit created a gash for a scar. Sometimes the best carvings result from an inspiring pumpkin shape. I didn't need to carve ears, but I did use small scraps and toothpicks to create the electrodes on his non-existing neck.

If you are going to attach ears to your pumpkin, simply cut out an oval shape (or ring) then rotate it and reinsert so that the light can highlight it from both front and back. Notice also how the eyelids are suggested with skin as the outline, while the facial accents are again slits carved all the way through. No shading required!

Every year I search the web for ideas. My Cheshire Cat was inspired by a picture of a pumpkin carving that I found online. The hard drive of my desktop PC before I could get a copy of it on my printer. I also lost MS PowerPoint where I had stored the image. My wife's printer cut off part of the image, so I improvised. I had to figure out how to make the mouth using small triangles on the bottom and larger ones on the top. Everything was carved freehand without using any markers for laying out the lines. For Frankie, I used a photo of a drawing of the monster then made my own inspired design.

Harry (2022), Ken Patterson

I carved a Harry Potter face this year. The example I found has some wonderfully jagged lines and uses peeling for most of the face. The deepest cuts are for his scar (from he who will remain nameless), his eyes, ears, and at his temples. Surprisingly, it only took ~1 hour to complete. I ended up scraping the entire face later but forgot to leave skin for the dark eyebrows. I pushed straightened paperclips through the flesh (from the back) to attach pieces of pumpkin skin above the eyes. Now it looks much more like the young wizard instead of a creepy Chucky doll. It will look even better with glasses made out of wire. The black dots in his eyes are black-headed straight pins. I'm thinking of adding large green sequins for the irises. The entire look is growing on me. It looks better when viewed or photographed from above.

Daytime Harry (2022)

Here's how Harry looks during the daytime and with wire spectacles added. I also added some orange pumpkin sequins (couldn't find green) for irises.

Martha Stewart pumpkin & Mr. Bill

Our pumpkin carving party with the family was a great success. We served pizza and pumpkin pie and take-home caramel apples. We texted photos of our jack-o-lanterns to family members not in attendance and asked them to guess who carved which pumpkin. We also watched the Seahawks beat the NY Giants. Here are two cookie-cutter creations.

Traditional Jack-o-Lanterns

The next two are pretty traditional jack-o-lantern faces. They were carved free hand except for the mouth on the one on the left. He used a cookie cutter shape and repeated it to make the mouth. My sister-in-law got creative and made hair for her pumpkin by carving away the skin and some of the flesh. I like her skeleton nose complete with nostrils.

Symmetric Pumpkin & Chewbacca the Wookie

My sister-in-law's husband decided to carve his second pumpkin by reusing the same cookie cutter for the eyes and mouth. There was lots of hammering going on in order to get the cuts to go most of the way through the flesh. He even inverted the tool to get symmetry in the face. I chose to carve the head of Chewbacca the Wookie from Star Wars, although he could also pass for the Sasquatch.

The Mandalorian (2022), Ken Patterson

We grew two pumpkins this year but didn't carve them. I used another store-bought pumpkin to carve the Mandalorian helmet. It was challenging to carve a black and grey helmet with only little shiny spots on the metal shapes. The deepest cuts were for the eyes and the outside defining the ears and left and right sides of the helmet.

Since my daughter chose not to participate, and her uncle brought a green pumpkin, I carved Grogu ('Baby Yoda') from the Star Wars Disney+ television series The Mandalorian.

Three of the most challenging for me. Mandalorian actually looks best in darkness (below). I love how Baby Yoda looks at twilight (right). Tonight, a 9-yr-old girl told me how much she admired my pumpkins. And she recognized the Wookie! She was definitely a Star Wars fan!!

Here's a photo of my pumpkins all lit up on Halloween night!

My Inspirations for Creating Art

From Fox broadcast at Field of Dreams (8/12/21)

Lately, I have been inspired by what I see on social media, TV, commercial ads, and of course movies. I've even captured images from what is being displayed on my TV using my cellphone. It's overwhelming how many photos I've conveniently stored there. I wonder how the old masters would have used the technology and media of today to capture, store, and manipulate images more readily and without spending hours observing, sketching, and drawing what they saw. Of course, they had to rely much more on their own imagination, models, painting outdoors from nature, and the work of other artists for inspiration.

Paint 3D Landscapes
by Jon Patterson

Producing art can be its own inspiration. Practicing and experimenting with techniques and media provides new ideas and develops new skills. I'm constantly reading, consulting my own library of art books, researching topics and artists online, and journaling about future art posts. I find that my art colleagues and my own brother produce much more art than I do, which inspires me to create more art. I've already completed five new works using Paint 3D. And I'm working on an acrylic portrait of one of my favorite baseball players.

Ballet (after Degas)
Ken Patterson

While planning and preparing to teach art to others, I often get inspired to create my own examples for my students or pull images from online sources. For my pastels class, I tried my hand at reproducing a Degas painting as a way of employing many of the techniques I was intending to share with my students.

Bryce and Friends (2021), Ken Patterson

I am also inspired by things in my own life, including of course my pets. I look forward to our annual trip to Palm Springs and our visits to the California dog parks along the way. Here is a pastel version of a photo I took of my dog and two of his new dog park friends. The gravel surface gave me an opportunity to play with color and texture with a nod to impressionism.

Castle Landscape (2022), Ken Patterson

Sometimes my inspiration is a combination of an example I provided for a class, its rendition created by a student, and the challenge to recreate it in Paint 3D. I included it in my latest 'How To' post.

View from Cedar Butte (2022), Ken Patterson

Probably my favorite source of inspiration is nature. While I love doing portraits, I am learning to love painting landscapes, especially from photos. I plan to do more of these using some of my daughter's photos captured during her visits to Italy and adjacent countries. On our recent hike of the Cedar Butte Trail, I photographed the view from the top and painted it using Microsoft Paint 3D. Pretty good, considering I used a mouse on my desktop PC!

Milo Redwood & Studio

The work of other artists has inspired me in many ways. It inspires many of my blog posts. It's been fun for me to interview local artists and learn what inspires them. I often chat up artists when visiting their studios. I'll even engage with museum curators or volunteers to find out more about specific art exhibitions.

Son of Man (1963), René Magritte

Movies can be another source of inspiration and it's fun to watch for famous art being used in the background sets. I've blogged about that too, as far back as March 2020 with my Movie Art Cameos post. "The Thomas Crown Affair" uses the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a backdrop for its romantic art caper. In it, you will see works by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pablo Picasso, and, of course, René Magritte's "The Son of Man".

The photography can also be pretty impressive. Many of my brother's paintings were done using professional photographic compositions created by my sister-in-law.

So, what inspires you? Living with intentional observation, reading, journaling, sketching, drawing, taking photographs, taking art classes, visiting museums, and experiencing nature will enrich your life and may make you a better artist. If nothing else, it will allow you to appreciate life and share it with others.