Pumpkins

The assignment was to carve a pumpkin for Camp Sunshine. First, we drew out our designs on a separate paper, and then transferred it onto the pumpkin. The subject of my carving is a rooster. I drew on the surface of the pumpkin with a 6B pencil, because sometimes you can see the black marker, and I don't like how that looks when you finish carving. Then I went over the lines with a linoleum carving tool, so it would be easier to cut with the small knife.

I used space in the negative and positive space of the whole design; and balance to make sure there wasn't too much of the pumpkin carved out. First, I wanted to do a Dia de Los Muertos skull, but then I wanted to do a wolf. But I couldn't figure out how to do the wolf without cutting out too much of the pumpkin, so then I changed to a cat, but I had the same problem there. So I did a simple rooster design instead.

I really like chickens, so I thought this would be fun to do. I like how to tail feathers came out and how they didn't break, even when I cut close to already cut out shapes. If I could fix it, I might add a little more detail to the overall design, but I was running out of time to carve it so I just went simple.