Will You Be Carving A Jack O’lantern This Year?

A brief history of the Jack O’Lantern

The tradition of Jack O’Lantern carving dates back centuries and has a few possible origins in folklore, Will-o’-the-whisp for example, an atmospheric phenomenon which occurs over bogs and swamps, creating a ghostly light – this was believed to lure travelers off the path believing it to be a house or shelter.

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The predominant story behind it comes from the Irish folk tale of Stingy Jack, a trickster who was banished to roam in purgatory after he wasn’t allowed into heaven for this sinful life, nor hell after he tricked the devil - he was given a glowing ember to light his way as he wondered for eternity, he carved out a turnip to make a lantern to hold the ember in, becoming Jack of the lantern.

Jack O’Lanterns were traditionally carved in turnips, swede, potato, and other root vegetables, primarily in Gaelic culture around the festival of Samhain (now Halloween), which marked the end of the harvest and the start of the darker nights when it's believed the vale to the spirits roaming the earth is much thinner, people carved them with scary faces to ward off these spirits.

*x2 image Pennywise, Jack

Irish immigrants then took this tradition to America, where the Jack O’Lantern found a new medium in the form of Pumpkins!

Types of Pumpkin carving

There are three types of pumpkin carving:

1. Cut out – this is the style people are most familiar with, it involves cutting straight through the pumpkin, removing blocks to make the design.

2. 3D Sculpting – this involves carving the pumpkin to make a 3d sculpture, much the same way you would when carving clay or wood.

3. Shading – this is the style I specialise in, this technique is closer to etching and involves shaving the pumpkin to different depths (rarely cutting all the way through), when light passes through you will get a wide range of shades allowing for a much more detailed design.

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Pumpkin Shading

When you first start pumpkin shading it's important to know how to make a good stencil, A big part of developing your pumpkin carving ability is manual dexterity and learning which tools achieve the best cut for the desired effect, start with simple designs and build up to more complicated designs - Selecting a design with good contrast between light and dark areas will make life much easier for yourself.

If you are drawing the design yourself, sketch it out on paper first then stencil the design on, here’s a link to a step by step article I published on bored panda last year:

https://www.boredpanda.com/halloween-how-to-carve-pumpkin-like-pro-pumpkinfreak/

*Long tutorial Video

My love of drawing has helped my pumpkin carving, a basic understanding of how light interacts with 3D objects to create tonal value is extremely useful, here’s a YouTube video explaining the Lamberts law of emission, understanding this is key to pumpkin shading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vapw6n6FyU

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More info: youtube.com