Squash & Pumpkin Skulls

Here in America on the eve of our Thanksgiving holiday, preparing goodies for our annual feast, I thought this would be a wonderful time to show off a little inspiration for you to play with your food.

First up is Dillon Ingram from Columbia, SC who sent us this carved squash.


Next is Phil Hope in the UK who said: “On short notice, I carved this on Halloween morning.”


Last we have Jack who used The Skullmaster’s skull stencil to carve his pumpkin this year.


“3.14159” C says:

Thank you all for submitting these wonderful carved examples of your artwork. Perhaps these will inspire others to get into a carving mood while they celebrate this next skulltastic holiday.

[Flashback Friday] 224. Butternut Skull

Flashback Friday is a weekly countdown of the fan selected top 52 skulls of Skull-A-Day 1.0. Each week I'll be posting an original skull along with some additional commentary in order from lowest to highest rated, with the #1 skull appearing in the last week of year 3 of the project...

#31: 224. Butternut Skull

One of my favorite things during the project was letting materials dictate the shape of the skull. In this case, the cartoon-y dropped jaw just made sense for the elongated shape of the squash. A friend said he thought he was having a screen problem when he scrolled the page to see this image and the jaw kept going and going as if the pixels were repeating!

Speaking of carving...be sure to send in some pictures of your own skull-y pumpkins (and other homemade decorations) that you've made for Halloween and we'll show them here!

Oh and if you're wondering here's what happens when you let a butternut squash dry out for several months.

[BONUS UPDATE] The Fate of #244 Butternut Skull

On January 13th, I made a skull out of a butternut squash: #244 Butternut Skull...



After that it sat on a shelf in my kitchen (with a few of the other skulls) and dried out on its own ending up like this...

[BONUS UPDATE] The Fate of #96 Squashed Skull

On September 7th, 2007 my skull for the day was a carved acorn squash: 96. Squash(ed) Skull


A few days later I posted a picture of it as it had aged:



Here's what happened after that:
As the squash continued to age it was getting softer and starting to grow mold so I decided to put it in the oven on the lowest setting and help it dry out. Everything went well for a few days of this, until someone who was unaware of the drying process decided to preheat the oven for some baking and burnt the little fellow to a crisp. Happily it was discovered before it was entirely destroyed, but the result was a little more toasty than originally planned...


It's now about 2 x 2 x 1.5in (5 x 5 x 4cm).

224. Butternut Skull

Carved Local Organic Butternut Squash (9.5 in x 4.5in x 4.5in). It's been a while since I've carved a vegetable and this one was just "screaming" out to me (heh, sorry I couldn't resist!).

[BONUS SKULL] 96. Squash(ed) Skull - Revisited

Squash(ed) Skull has been sitting out on a counter for the last few days and this is the result!
Thanks to Terry for the inspiration to revisit an old piece.