'Pittsburgh Pumpkin Guy' shares tips for Halloween carving and sculpting
Take it from a pro — if you want to create the perfect jack-o’-lantern, you have to pick a pumpkin “that speaks to you.”
That’s professional pumpkin carver Brendan Conaway’s best advice. Conaway, a 35-year-old Plum resident, doesn’t just carve pumpkins, he sculpts them, a completely different art form, he says.
“By the time I’m done (sculpting) a pumpkin, they’re usually ready to say something,” Conaway said.
So, how exactly does one become a professional pumpkin carver?
“I got into it, and I started posting pictures of my 3D pumpkins on the internet and, like most things, somebody found me on social media,” Conaway explained.
“There’s this woman named Jackie Hooper who runs a local entertainment management company, Sound Advice Entertainment. She was searching for a pumpkin carver. One of my friends shared my posts with her, and she was like, ‘Whoa, we have to get you in front of everybody.’ ”
Since then, Conaway has been to Seven Springs for its Autumnfest and also appeared at the Senator John Heinz History Center, the Westmoreland Museum of American Art and several senior living facilities. And Conaway has started a “carve and sip” class, where he teaches pumpkin carving, and attendees enjoy a few glasses of wine.
Conaway clearly enjoys his work and carves close to 100 pumpkins in the month of October. He spends the other 11 months of the year running his own painting and interior renovations business. Google Pittsburgh Pumpkin Guy or Pittsburgh Painter Guy and Conaway comes up.
He says pumpkin carving is clearly on the rise.
“It’s probably at a point right now where it’s going to take off in new ways,” Conaway said. “There’s lots of popularity because of shows on the Food Network right now. There’s a show called ‘Halloween Wars’ and another show called ‘Outrageous Pumpkins,’ and they’re both essentially pumpkin carving competitions. It’s becoming more main stream. People are learning there are other more unique ways to carve pumpkins than just your typical jack-o’-lantern.”
Whether you are looking to carve a typical jack-o’-lantern or create a pumpkin sculpture — creating designs on the outside of the pumpkin without hollowing it out — Conaway has some advice.
When picking a pumpkin, pay attention to weight. Shape and size don’t matter as much as weight. When doing a pumpkin sculpture, Conaway prefers a heavier pumpkin with thick walls.
“If you’re talking specifically about jack-o’-lanterns, you want the walls of the pumpkin to be particularly thin so that there’s less pumpkin to carve through in order to get your light to shine through in all of the brightness that you want,” Conaway said. “If you’re in the pumpkin patch picking up pumpkins and you find one that’s lighter, that’s the one that you want.”
Conaway keeps a variety of pumpkin carving tools that he pulls out of a black bag. He stresses the importance of having the right tools.
“The tools that you can get on the shelf at Giant Eagle or Target with the booklet with the patterns in there, don’t undersell those kits, because they are awesome compared to a kitchen knife,” he said.
“If you use a regular serrated blade from your kitchen, it’s not quite thick, but it’s thick enough that you’re going to have to push and pull into that pumpkin so much. And it’s an actual knife that can slice your finger open. But those little serrated blades that you get out of those kits are exceptionally thin. The serrated blade on those is perfect for cutting through the pumpkin with ease and you’ll finish your pumpkin and be a lot less tired by the end of it.”
For those who would prefer not to have to cut into a pumpkin every fall, Conaway said there is an alternative.
“You can go to any local craft store and they sell foam pumpkins that you can still carve,” he said. “They’re hollowed out. So, at the end of the year you can pack it up with the rest of your Halloween decorations. It doesn’t rot. It lasts longer. If there is something about pumpkin carving that people get sad about, it’s that it’s temporary. They deteriorate and go bad. I love that it goes bad, and I get to carve another one. (Foam pumpkins) are for those people who just want to set it and forget it.”
For those who insist on carving a real pumpkin, Conaway has another recommendation.
“One mistake that I run into with people and their jack-o’-lantern style pumpkins is they’ll get that stencil from the book that they picked up at the grocery store, and, sometimes, the designs are really intricate. Something to be mindful of is the positioning of your knife,” he said.
“A lot of the reason that those stencils don’t work the way that people want them to is because they’re cutting around that stencil, but their tool is positioned poorly. They’re doing a lot of different angles of cuts and then you end up making a mistake and a piece falls out that shouldn’t or light doesn’t pour through an area the way that it should.”
Conaway said to make sure the handle of the knife is parallel to the floor. He refers to it as making straight cuts.
Another tool he recommends is something called a loop tool. It’s like a dull razor blade bent into the shape of a circle.
”What it does is scrape the inside walls of the pumpkin and get rid of all the guts. It doesn’t leave anything behind and also you’re able to thin the walls of the pumpkin. Let’s say the walls are thick and the light is not pouring through, you can make the walls thinner by just going on the inside and scooping out as much as you want,” Conaway said.
Conaway highly recommends trying pumpkin sculpture. You may need more tools, but he said it’s more fun.
“I’m able to carve a pretty intricate three-dimensional pumpkin in about an hour,” he said. “If pumpkin sculpture is something that you want to get into, make sure you look at sculpting web sites on the internet. Go to sculpting specific web sites to build the (tool) set that you want.”
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