So, I have to admit, those stupid little five-dollar tool kits from WalMart make all the difference in the world. As a child, I was only able to make use of the tools, knives, and implements I could scrounge up around my mother’s kitchen (and that she would allow me to use, of course), so my carvings were sometimes… crude. But Better Half and I decided to splurge and get a “real” pumpkin-carving kit, and here are the end results:
First off, we have Better Half’s, using one of the templates included in the tool kit.
Next, we have mine, as carved from a kanji I somehow managed to draw myself about a year ago. Points to whoever gets it.
If you ask really nice, I might make the template available…
Great jack-o-lantern!
Serenity, isn’t it?
And Mugwug wins the cookie!
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I honestly did not think it would work, given all the little fiddly bits and the detail and such. However, with those nifty little saws that come in the kits, a lot more things are possible than if you are trying to use a kitchen knife.
And the bat was just awesomely cute
It’s pretty damn slick as far as I’m concerned. Definately not the sort of thing you’d see very often.
We didn’t carve pumpkins this year, at 3 years old we figured my daughter wouldn’t have the energy for much beyond an hour or so of trick’r'treating, but next year I’ll be trying my hand at something similar.
If you’re parting with the template I’d appreciate a copy. Hint, hint.
-GRIN-
(I only recognized the Kanji because I had purchased a Serenity patch -Ebay Link – for my new tacti-cool baseball cap a month or so ago and it’s been sitting on top of my monitor ever since.)
It does look nifty, I will give it that.
, can be found here. It is kind of rough about the edges, simply because it was drawn by hand, and then photographed (as opposed to scanned), and converted into a black-and-white image. Been meaning to go back and scan it, but have never gotten around to it. Enjoy!
Being without a little one ourselves, Better Half and I have to come up with other ways to entertain ourselves come All Hallows’… Basically, we come up with random jack o’lantern ideas. Last year it was Jack Skellington and Stitch, this year… well, you see the end results.
The template, since you asked so nicely
*sees if he can yoink a patch like that somewhere other than Ebay…*
Kanji is available as a language font, so you could convert it to curves in Illustrator and have a scalable vector graphic in postscript.
Well, that is assuming I could put together the “Serenity” pinyin kanji (something tells me just typing in “serenity” will not do it), and assuming I had Illustrator
.
.
PaintShop might suffice… That said, I drew it by hand initially just to get the shapes of the strokes the way I wanted them (angular, as opposed to brush-like). After that, I have just been lazy in scanning and editing the original
Shiny! Both Jacks, very cool.
Thanks Ride Fast. Now I just have to figure out how to improve next year…