Pumpkin Carving

It is strange that out of all the alaviable forms of visual art the one the I am good at is pumpkin carving. I don't know why but I just love carving while watching horror movies and it seems that my carving refects what I watch. It is kind of wierd because it requires no thought on my part and my hands seem to do all the work for me. I am oblivious to how good the carvings are untill I finish and put a candle in one. It has almost become a ritual for me that throughout october my house is covered with pumpkin pieces and that my house has always recieved more trick or treaters each halloween after the last.

I don't know how to post my pictures online. But I can show you one carving that I did simply because It won first prize in a catigory of a nation wide contest and they put it up on their site.

Need a Hand?
<img src="http://www.pumpkinmasters.com/images/contest/needahand02.jpg" alt="" />

I trying to get into pumpkin sculpting and hope to sculpt some this october.

Do you guys like carving and think of it form of art? And could you tell me how to post some of my pictures online?

Really? Thanks.

I really want to post some of my other carvings but I have no idea how to get them online. I have a scanner and all but I am so computer inept that it first took me a couple days just to learn how to post a pic from another site on the message boards.

No but once I finished Carving it I did realize how much it resembled that scene from the movie. So just as a nod to the movie I took one of the lines said by the hand faces and used that to title my piece.

The true origin of the piece was that I was watching a movie when this one shot of a clawed hand appeared that was reall strangely lit. Which got me looking at my own hands. I knew that carving a hand would not be very impressive by itself so I decided make it into a face and tried to combine the two.

I'll try to e-mail them to you. Thanks

Damn! my computer refuses to reconize I have i scanner. As soon as I fix this I'll send them to you. I might need a new scanner because the one I have is old so this may take a few days.

Thanks for all your comments. I still am trying to get my scanner to work but it looks like I'll have to get a new one.

By the way if you want to see some of the other winners of the contest I entered here's the website: <a href="http://www.pumpkinmasters.com/pmcont.html" target="_blank">Pumpkin Masters</a>

I just realized that the post above could be taken in a way that all the carvings there were mine which they are not. I only entered a couple of my carvings into the contest and "Need a Hand" was the only one that won.

Blofeld my scanner works again but for some reason it only scans in black and white so I'll send you the photos but they won't be in color.

Alright can someone explane why when I try to put a picture in my email the computer says there are no pictures saved in adobe but when I go into adobe and press open my pictures are there. Yet it doesn't list the pictures under adobe when I try to put them in an email on AOL?

The pictures have been sent. Thanks YaeSu for telling me how.

For national contests there really is no showing. If a person wanted to enter one they'd have to take a picture of what they carved and send the picture in with a piece of paper showing the pattern of ther carving. That ia pretty much it.

As for local contests around where I live I have never entered in one because they are timed. I can't bring in a pumpkin that I carved the day before. These contests I dn't like because though I am good a carving It takes me awhile and I know I couldn't do anything good with the pressure of being timed.

As for preserving a pumpkin there are many different ways of doing it. The best is probably if you have a big refrigerater is to cover them with Saran-wrap and stick them in there. Another way I liked is one year I found a small spray bottle full of a kind chemicl that dried quickly on the pumpkin and created a tight seal from the air keeping away the mold but that was two years ago and I can't find more of that stuff anywhere, which is too bad because it worked well and it just about doubled the life of a carving. Finally there is a third way for making a carving last and this way I haven't tried because it is messy. Every now and then I come across tubs of preserving chemicals at the halloween stores which purpose is to pickle the pumpking. You are supposed to fill a wash tub/bucket with water then pour the chemicals in and let the pumpkin soak in the mixture for two days. This supposedly will make it last for a couple of months but I could not tell you if this is true or not.

The way I get my pictures to look bright enough is to get a 10 second prolonged exposure of the pumpking while it is lit. Though if your using a digital camera I don't think you can do that. Its Good pumpkin carving, too bad about the light.

It's that time of year again. and I am in full swing creating patterns for my carvings. this year I find myself gravitating towards lions and tigers as carving subjects. I try and get pictures posted once they have been carved which won't be for another week or two. In the meantime I'll look for a way to get my pictures posted again because they've all shrunk into little red Xs.