Halloween is coming, Samain, the day of the lanterns made with carved pumpkins, and for the third year I am preparing mine. I admit that it is giving me much more work than I thought and I am beginning to think that I have aimed too high.
Yesterday I gave up because of the way it looked and decided that I couldn’t dedicate more time to it, but today I want to give it some touches and try to improve the most botched area, which is the upper part, that kind of helmet characteristic of the Alien. I will reposition it to try to make the face and that part join in a way that looks more “natural” and not as forced as it is now. The video will still take a few daysBut here are some pictures of the part of the pumpkin I am most happy with, the mouth. I present to you my version of Jack’O Alien.
También podéis ver las versiones de mis calabazas de Halloween de los años anteriores.
After a little more war I managed to reposition the Alien’s hull, although it didn’t look exactly as I wanted it to. I still think I aimed too high with this Halloween lantern.
I also had trouble lighting the lantern, as the pumpkins I used are quite large and a single candle doesn’t do much. I needed to put a large candle inside the mouth and four small tea candles on the wooden stand shown in the video, and to further deepen the triangle-shaped holes for the eyes, very carefully until only the skin of the pumpkin remained. And even then the amount of light it emitted wasn’t like the pumpkins of previous years, but admittedly those photos where Jack’O peeks out from a black background with his eyes lit up looked pretty good.
As for the wooden supports, in the video you will see that I put one behind the pumpkin to prevent it from falling backwards. You will also see the wooden stand I am talking about for the tea candles. It consists of two points nailed to the gourd that reach the wooden base and a slat between them to maintain the position and do not tend to join, since the main function of this inner support is to hold the upper gourd that acts as a hull.
