To all dem haters
Okay seriously I don't know what people's deals are but I had 4 different friends try to dissuade me from doing this, even after I said I just wanted to see if I could AND I'd be doing it for fun with little to no expectations. One of them (my roomie's friend, more of an acquaintance to me) walked into the room AS I was carving it, took one look at my reference picture and flat out said "that's a bad idea." Well, I don't remember asking you but thank you for your constructive input anyway.
Well you know what, eff them aaaaaall. I went and did it anyway.
The tools. I had these lying around from previous classes, so I decided to put them to good use. Not pictured is the $1.50 serrated carving knife me and my friend bought to cut out the tops of the pumpkins.
It begins. I did the hole-poking method of transfer. I gotta say after I took off the stencil it was pretty hard not to give up right then and there.
Progress shot 1
75% of the way there
Finished! I had to thin out the inside walls 3 separate times, because the light would NOT show through. I was so freaking scared the spoon would break through the carving, I kept bracing it with my hand. Lesson learned, thin BEFORE you carve.
Money shots
Ugh that stupid crease thingy, messing up Thane's beautiful face, HDU
My right arm was shaking pretty badly at this point so I got of lot of these shots
My roomie wanted to use a jack-o-lantern for a photo to promote the calendar she illustrated with her friends (she did October), so like true Asians we reused it and carved a 2 minute face into the back for her to use. Lookit Thane pulling double duty, such a giver.
We were having a little too much fun taking pictures in the dark
Bonus nerd pumpkin carved by my friend, one of the non-believers. I can't get too mad at her though, because I would angrily yell expletives at her whenever I made a mistake. At one point I told her to "choke on a dick" and she took it like a trooper XD. She did pretty good considering she used the wrong side of a knife to carve it lol
The aftermath
Total carve time = 6 hours. I'm REALLY happy with how it turned out, I was totally not expecting it to turn out as good as it did. I'm actually kind of a lamer when it comes to Halloween, I can count the number of times I've dressed up on one hand and I don't actually remember if I was in middle school or high school the last time I carved a pumpkin. I don't expect this sucker to last past the week (we had to do it this weekend because it's the only time we had a free day) but I think I've fulfilled my Halloween participation quota for the year.