Years ago, I saw an episode of Rosanne and at the end of the episode they had all these cool pumpkins, real pumpkins, carved with the faces of the actors. They were phenomenal. You can see one on the cover of the DVD of the Rosanne Show Halloween specials.
I wondered if I could do that same thing. So, a long while back I tried doing a pumpkin of my wife's face. I didn't have a good camera to take a picture of it at the time. So, video taped it.
This is a VHS video of it illuminated by a small candle. Its the only proof I have that I once did it.
Well, I wanted to try again for my grand-niece, Sydney. There is actually a fairly lengthy and detailed sequence of steps to follow starting with getting a good photograph. Then, you have to enhance it to high contrast with decent shadow contours on the subject's face. You have to avoid really fine/small details that you can't easily carve into a pumpkin. You have to select a good shaped pumpkin. You have to print the photo and transfer the pattern to a pumpkin. Finally, you have to carve the pumpkin.
The carving technique described here is the simplest. You just carve complete holes in the pumpkin. In more advanced techniques, you don't carve all the way through the pumpkin surface. You carve to various depths creating various shades of dark and light areas. That's much more technically challenging than I was willing to try.
Taking A Good Photograph
First, you need to get a good photograph of the person's face. It can't be any photo though. You need it to be a high contrast photo with the person's face illuminated from the side. The smaller and brighter the light source, the better. A decent flashlight will do. Or, a desk lamp.
You want a picture that shows the subject's facial contours through a pattern of light and shadow on their face.
So, you need to position the light mostly to one side of the person's face but slightly in front like the diagram above. Also, turn off all other light sources in the room and turn off your camera's flash feature. Finally, don't position the camera too close to the subject's face. Its fine if the camera is 5-10 feet away. But, because you are taking a picture with very low light, you may need to be sure to hold the camera very steady for several seconds to allow it to focus and take the long exposure necessary to capture the picture.
Try several different positions of the light and have the subject make various faces (scary ones or pleasant ones). If you position the light above or below, you will get dramatically different facial contours from the different patterns of light and shadow.
Sydney lives a few states away. And, her mother didn't have a very decent light source. It was a small LED toy with a light with a blueish hue. But, she took several pictures and sent them to me. Here are some examples.
Honestly, these pictures are pretty bad and I was still able to use them to get a good result. But, I had to spend about an hour in Adobe Photoshop playing with various images and with various image enhancements to finally get a decent image. I finally decided to work with the image on the left.
Processing the Image in Photoshop
Ultimately, you will need to produce a black and white (one bit) image; also known as a threshold image. That is, an image that is composed of either large pure white (no gray) or pure black (no gray) regions. Here is an the final result I produced from the image on the left, above.
I have Adobe Photoshop. But, many other image tools would probably work. Here is what I had to do to enhance the image in produce the one above.
- Change the image from RGB color to Gray Scale image
- Adjust brightness and contrast of image so the lighter regions are above 50% grayscale and the darker regions are below
- Photoshop has a real convenient image adjustment tool called the Exposure tool. It has 3 sliders that allow you to easily vary the controls and immediately see the effects on the image. So, you can quickly find settings that result in a suitable image.
Printing the Image
You will note that the image above is mostly black with some light regions. Printing such an image is going to use a lot of ink. So, reverse it. Photoshop has a function to do that to. It changes black to white and white to black.
Selecting a Pumpkin
You want a pumpkin that is taller than it is wide, like most faces; about the same size as an standard sheet of paper. Honestly, a bigger pumpkin is even better because you can enlarge the printed image a bit giving you more room to cut the smaller details of the image.
Transferring the Pattern to the Pumpkin
Ok, so how do you transfer the printed pattern to the pumpkin? Well, first you need to carve out the insides of the pumpkin
Then, decide which side of the pumpkin you plan to cut with the pattern. Turn the pumpkin on its side, clean and dry the surface. Then tape the pattern to the pumpkin with several pieces of tape on each side to hold it well.
Once you begin the process of transferring the pattern, you don't want it to move until you are done. So, make sure it is securely taped to the pumpkin. As a precaution, use a marker to draw a couple of small hash marks across the edge of the paper and onto the pumpkin on both sides. That way, if the pattern comes loose, you can reposition it by matching the hash marks.
To transfer the pattern, you trace along the boundaries of the dark regions, pushing a pencil tip or pin through the paper so that it makes a tiny hole in the pumpkin surface. In the picture below, I am using a transfer tool that came with the set of carving tools I used.
Below is a close up of the eyebrow region I started with. By the way, I cheated a bit with the eyebrow when making the image pattern. I am cutting it here so that light will shine through. But, in the original picture, Sydney's eyebrow isn't bright or in bright light. But, I needed an additional facial feature to help frame the whole image and so I manually touched it up in Photoshop.
Although I started with the carving kit transfer tool, I found the poker tip to be a little too fat and less accurate in tracing around the boundaries of smaller detail regions. You can see that in the close up of the eyebrow above. So, I switched to a simple push pin.
As you complete each region, you might want to cross it out with a marking pen so you know you've done it. That's especially true if you use a push pin because you can't see the holes easily. Once you have finished tracing all the regions, remove the pattern sheet.
In the photos below, on the left you can easily see the holes created with the carving kit transfer tool. The holes made with the push pin are a little harder to see. Next, take a maker pen and connect the dots. Trace the hole patterns with the pen to help make the pattern more visible. I used a red pen (image on right).
As you complete each region, you might want to cross it out with a marking pen so you know you've done it. That's especially true if you use a push pin because you can't see the holes easily. Once you have finished tracing all the regions, remove the pattern sheet.
In the photos below, on the left you can easily see the holes created with the carving kit transfer tool. The holes made with the push pin are a little harder to see. Next, take a maker pen and connect the dots. Trace the hole patterns with the pen to help make the pattern more visible. I used a red pen (image on right).
Ok, you've transferred the pattern. But, before you begin cutting it, you have some more carving to do on the inside of the pumpkin just behind the pattern. On that side, it helps if you continue carving out the inside of the pumpkin to narrow its thickness a bit. A pumpkin can easily have a 1 inch thick skin or more. Try carving out the inside of the pumpkin on the pattern side down to around half an inch. This just makes it easier to carve the pattern.
Carving the Pattern
First, you need some good tools. A typical kitchen knife won't do especially for the fine detail (small holes or small variations in the pattern's boundaries). There are plenty of carving kits available in stores around Halloween. Here are some of the tools that came in the kit I bought.
They are basically like tiny saw blades. I used the longer tool to cut the top of the pumpkin out. But, for the pattern, I used the smaller blade with the black and orange handle.
Its best to cut the smaller regions first and leave the bigger regions for last. So, I started on the eye, parts of the nose and teeth first. The smaller regions require finer cutting. Trying to do them when you've already cut out large neighboring regions is more difficult and more prone to accidentally tearing the pumpkin surface.
Finally, when cutting out the larger regions, its best not to try to cut them out in a single cut. Do them piece by piece by cutting the difficult parts of the pattern first and then just cut arbitrary paths through where the hole will be to create smaller pieces you remove. For example, in the picture below, you can cut across the dotted lines to help remove the hole in pieces.
Also, as you cut these larger regions, its helpful to stabilize the back of the surface with your other hand by reaching inside through the top. Just take care not to cut yourself.
Once you've finished carving all the holes, there is still some finishing work to do. The holes on the inside of the pumpkin are invariably no where near as well defined as they are on the outside. There is debris still clinging to the inside and walls of the hole are probably not parallel. These problems are worse for really thick walled pumpkins. The effect is that less light will come through these holes when you illuminate it.
So, the last step is to take some time cleaning up the holes by removing debris from the inside and squaring up the hole walls often by cutting some of the pumpkin wall inside the whole and behind the surface away.
When you're done, you have something that looks like this.
That's a photo of the actual pumpkin illuminated with a 1000 lumen flashlight from above. . .
Its best to cut the smaller regions first and leave the bigger regions for last. So, I started on the eye, parts of the nose and teeth first. The smaller regions require finer cutting. Trying to do them when you've already cut out large neighboring regions is more difficult and more prone to accidentally tearing the pumpkin surface.
Finally, when cutting out the larger regions, its best not to try to cut them out in a single cut. Do them piece by piece by cutting the difficult parts of the pattern first and then just cut arbitrary paths through where the hole will be to create smaller pieces you remove. For example, in the picture below, you can cut across the dotted lines to help remove the hole in pieces.
Also, as you cut these larger regions, its helpful to stabilize the back of the surface with your other hand by reaching inside through the top. Just take care not to cut yourself.
Once you've finished carving all the holes, there is still some finishing work to do. The holes on the inside of the pumpkin are invariably no where near as well defined as they are on the outside. There is debris still clinging to the inside and walls of the hole are probably not parallel. These problems are worse for really thick walled pumpkins. The effect is that less light will come through these holes when you illuminate it.
So, the last step is to take some time cleaning up the holes by removing debris from the inside and squaring up the hole walls often by cutting some of the pumpkin wall inside the whole and behind the surface away.
When you're done, you have something that looks like this.
That really doesn't look too great does it. Don't be discouraged. Things look very different once its illuminated…
That's a photo of the actual pumpkin illuminated with a 1000 lumen flashlight from above. . .
Advanced Carving
What would be really great is to automate the whole process of getting a picture, processing it and then carving it onto a pumpkin. I think we'd need some simple, scriptable image processing software and a computer controlled laser cutter. You could probably turn out a pumpkin every few minutes and start a small business for the Halloween holiday selling "your face on a pumpkin" carvings. Maybe a possible retirement project...
Anyways, Happy Halloween
to my grand-niece Sydney and her mother Latisha.
