Outrageous Pumpkins

Good news - I’m back on Food Network! This time, I’m carving pumpkins on Outrageous Pumpkins! I didn’t win, but I made it to the finale, I carved some very cool pumpkins, I got to work with a great production crew, and I met six other fantastic artists. So overall a fantastic experience!

I won the first challenge with my jack-o-lantern ghost story!

My nesting jack-o-lanterns got me through to the next episode!

Very happy with my zombie self-portrait.

The group haunted house challenge was a challenge, but we won our way through to the next episode.

My arachnophobia pumpkin with a spider eating someone’s eyeball.

The structure of my contortionist pumpkin get me through the the finale!

Pumpkin carving inspired by a toy.

My first time carving an Atlantic Giant! Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey come to life and impaled the birthday kid.

Genuinely one of the most fun shows I’ve ever been involved in!

Creepy Clown Pumpkin

I carved this pumpkins for an interview on local television, as a way of demonstrating how to use other fruits and vegetables in a pumpkin carve. The hair is sweet potato, the nose, teeth, and eyeballs are radishes, and the irises are lime peel.

Bat Pumpkin

I had some challenges with carving the wings because the inside of the pumpkin was very stringy, but I’m extremely pleased with the stem for the nose.

Spider Pumpkin

This is my first multi-pumpkin carve. I used a dremel to carve out the spider web on the bottom pumpkin, which is also the first time I’ve used a dremel on a pumpkin. It was a little messy, but also very fun.

Jellyfish Pumpkin

I thought it would be fun to carve a jellyfish pumpkin using the goop inside the pumpkin. I was hoping for a little more goop, honestly, but I still think it’s pretty fun.

Clown Pumpkin

I got some new carving tools and wanted to try them out. Once I had carved it, I thought it needed some painted on clown makeup.

D20 Pumpkin

We're all about Dungeons and Dragons around here these days and I didn't have much time for pumpkin carving this year, so here's my quick D20 pumpkin.

Lord Voldemort Pumpkin

I somehow never seem to have much time for pumpkin carving these days, probably because I now spend the month of October making Halloween costumes for my niece and nephew. But this year we decided to go the store-bought route for our Harry Potter costumes, so I had a little time. I wanted to practice my 3-d pumpkin sculpting, so I made this little Lord Volde-pumpkin.

Note:

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling has disappointed me and many other people. By publicly opposing trans rights and misrepresenting trans people, she has fallen far short of the standard of loving acceptance set by the heroic characters in her books. To learn more, I recommend this open letter to J.K. Rowling from Mermaids, a group in the UK that advocates for trans and gender-diverse children. If you want to help, you can donate to Mermaids, Gender Spectrum, and many other groups working to support trans and gender-diverse people.

Sculpted Face Pumpkin

I took a pumpkin carving class from Shawn Feeney, the winning pumpkin carver of Halloween Wars Season 1.

Axe Cop Pumpkin

Wexter and Axe Cop are off to fight bad guys on the moon.

Banshee Pumpkin

To match the Banshee Cake, here’s my Banshee Pumpkin.

Mater and the Ghostlight Pumpkin

I was looking for things to carve into a pumpkin that my niece would appreciate. So naturally I turned to Mater’s Tall Tales for inspiration.

Raven Pumpkin

In my 11th consecutive year of entering the Pumpkinmasters carving contest, this is the pumpkin that finally won me the Grand Prize! Inspired by the ravens at the Tower of London, I think it represented my most effective use of textures to date.

Edgar Allan Poe Pumpkin

"Faces" is the only Pumpkinmasters category in which I have never won a prize. This pumpkin was my latest unsuccessful attempt to rectify that situation.

Owl Pumpkin

I only carved one pumpkin this year (but I still won the Pumpkinmasters "Animals" category! Woohoo!) I created the pattern by tracing over a photo of an owl.

Musical Pumpkin

Every now and then I try to go in an uncharacteristic direction with a simple, yet compelling design. Simple isn't really my strong suit, so they're generally not all that good. This one is no exception. I would characterize it as mediocre at best. Even the progression of notes is dull, both visually and aurally.

Howling Wolves Pumpkin

Generally, I'm not a big fan of the pumpkins that define an object by silhouetting it against the moon. I think it's overdone and simplistic enough that it usually indicates a poor command of the medium. But I did it anyway. And apparently it was good enough to win first prize in the Pumpkinmasters "Animals" category.

Danse Macabre Pumpkin

I actually bought the sheet music to Dance Macabre in the interests of verisimilitude. Unfortunately, the first several measures (which is about all I could fit on a pumpkin) are really quite boring.

Carnival of Horrors Pumpkin

This is my second attempt to create a circus-based pumpkin. I was trying to create a dynamic composition, juxtaposing the undulating curve of the roller coaster with the self-contained unity of the circular, be-skulled ferris wheel. It didn't really work, though. Especially with the big flag, it wound up looking very static and uninteresting. I guess I'll have to try again.

Epitaphs Pumpkin

I didn't come up with the epitaphs. I copied them off the internet. I think I expended too much effort of the legibility of the text and not enough on the atmosphere of the graveyard.