Okay,
help me out here. When did Halloween pumpkin carving become
so...awesome? When I was a
kid, riding my giant ground sloth to the playground, everyone I knew
just drew a few triangles and circles on a pumpkin and cut them out
with a kitchen knife. I felt fancy if I managed to include pupils in
the eyes. I remember starting to see those specialty carving kits
with the gnome-sized miter saws when I was in my teens,* and sometime
between then and now, it just exploded
as an artform.
Pumpkin
has become a medium of sculpture in its own right—a feat all the
more impressive when you remember that these globoid gourds are
available only seasonally and the resulting creations are necessarily
ephemeral. Despite its fragility, in the hands of an expert carver
the flesh of a pumpkin can hold fine details as well as soft wood,
and its translucency allows for subtle shading effects that only
become apparent when the candle inside is lit. At the extreme end, we
get stuff like this:
Most
people probably don't have it in them to create anything that
elaborate—I know I don't—but “rough image of a face” is no
longer the default. Between the aforementioned carving kits and the
widely available pattern templates, even the average neighborhood
candy-giver is as likely to have pumpkins carved to resemble
miniature scenes, or favorite media characters, as simple faces.
And
occasionally, they turn to a Disney theme park for inspiration.
Disney
jack-o-lanterns, per se...those are everywhere. Always quick to jump
on the bandwagon of anything child-focused, Disney prints loads of
pumpkin templates, in little booklets themed by character family.
You've got your Mickey & Friends, your Princess, your Winnie The
Pooh, your Pixar, probably your Jake and the Neverland
Pirates. If you want a design
specifically related to the parks, though, you're on your own.
Naturally.
Nonetheless,
some people pull it off, and it is my very great pleasure to show you
some examples of their work. I had to work a bit harder than I
anticipated (with some much appreciated help from The Sister) to
collect all these...it turns out that Googling “Disneyland
jack-o-lantern” doesn't bring up many examples of homemade carvings
by private citizens.
So
without further ado...
