Darth Vader Pumpkin

This evening we finally carved out some time to work on John's pumpkin - carved out time, get it? The hardest part of doing his pumpkin was decided what to do. He went from Spiderman and Batman to Bumblebee (a transformer) before finally settling in on Darth Vader. Fortunately for him, Becca got me some cool new carving tools from the craft store. They're intended use is clay, but they work well on the overgrown squash too.

From Darth Vader Pumpkin

And with the lights out...

From Darth Vader Pumpkin

Carving pumpkins directly, using the depth of flesh to manage light is a whole new experience for me. In many ways, its actually easier than typical carving, in that, typically for a reasonably complex pumpkin design you have to think in the "negative" to figure out what an "outline" going to look like in the end. By carving a full design directly in the pumpkin and using flesh-depth to manage the light, you can know what it's going to look like at all times by carving with a light in it and a dimly lit room. Darth was my first experience with this style of carving, motivated mostly by a Food Network Challenge. I'm already thinking about what we can do for next year's squash.