With Halloween fast approaching, I’ve got some fun pumpkin carving ideas to share with you. Many of the following photos show student’s first pumpkin creations.

Maybe these photos will give you some ideas and some inspiration to carve your own fun pumpkins.

Pumpkin Carving Portraits

This first photo is of the first pumpkin portrait carved by Ann Haddock after watching my Pumpkin Portraits video lessons. She did a very good job, don’t you think?

Ann Haddock's First Pumpkin Portrait

When you carve pumpkin portraits, you can use photos of your friends and family or you can try you hand at carving celebrities. Here a couple that I carved. continue reading…

Every year around Halloween, I receive quite a few viral emails from people that have lots photos of Ray Villafane’s amazing pumpkin carvings.

Because so many people are wowed by carvings by Ray, I thought I would share those photos with you in this blog post. They really are quite amazing. Further down this article, I’ll show you how you can learn to carve your own 3D pumpkins, taught by Ray himself. And, I’ll show you the easiest way possible to carve some of Ray Villafane’s pumpkin designs from an easy to follow pumpkin tattoo patterns.

Imaginative Pumpkin Carvings by Ray Villafane

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It’s been a very busy fall this year with introducing Ray Villafane’s 3D Pumpkin Carving Tutorials on DVD and with my carving at the White House. I hope that you had a very Happy Halloween.

People Learn how to Carve Expressive Pumpkins
in the style of  Ray Villafane

Lots of my customer/students have been having fun learning how to carve pumpkins with Ray Villafane’s Pumpkin Carving DVD. It is really not as difficult as it seems to carve pumpkins with expressive 3D faces.

At first it seems totally daunting. But when Ray Villafane breaks in down into a series of easy to follow steps, anyone can do it. Really! Well. anyone who wants to do it.

I have had so many student/customers send me emails telling me how pleased they are with their first attempts at carving faces after watching Ray Villafane‘s DVD tutorials.

One student told me that he thought carving faces would be too difficult. He though that he had to be an artist to sculpt pumpkin faces. But when he saw how Ray Villafane breaks it down into steps he thought, Wow, maybe I dont’ have to be an artist. He told me that he was so pleased with their pumpkin carvings and how they cna’t wait till next year to show off thier pumpkins at Halloween.

Take a look at photos of pumpkins that some people have carved after watching the DVD lessons by Ray Villanfane . continue reading…

I recently posted an article about carved pumpkin lanterns made to celebrate Halloween. In it, I show a bunch of carved pumpkins with movie and cartoon themes. One thing that these carved pumpkin lanterns all have in common is that they use varying thickness of the pumpkin to create varying shades of light and dark.

In order to help you carve your own carved pumpkin lanterns, I’ve made a free video to illustrate the concept of carving varying thicknesses to make differing shades of light and dark. Take a look and you will see what I mean. You will find it useful the next time you carve a pumpkin lantern. And the same concept works well when you carve lanterns from melons.

Take a look. continue reading…

Today is November 20 and I still have on display a carved white pumpkin lantern that I made on Halloween. That was October 31. So this pumpkin is now 21 days old! I’m finally about ready to throw it out. Amazingly, it is only now starting to get a little bit moldy on the inside. I’ve been keeping in on the table unrefrigerated all this time!

This is a huge contrast to the common orange pumpkins that I carved on the same day. Those got really black with mold on the inside within only 3 or 4 days.

Watch the video to see how this white pumpkin lantern has changed from day 1 to day 18. continue reading…