Dentists must love the month of October. Too much candy handed out and consumed equals a second, third or fourth Porsche for your local dentist. 🙂 In fact, there’s little more than three weeks until Halloween. That means it’s time once again for our annual Porsche Pumpkin Carving Contest.
Last year I put my Porsche Pumpkin Carving skills to the test and found them to be severely wanting. My original attempt is below:
Fortunately, a number of you did the same and did a much better job than me. Of all the carvings I saw, the best was far and away a GT3 RS carving by Porsche Pumpkin carver extraordinaire Adam Person (see below). In fact, Adam won our pumpkin carving contest and received a free copy of Porsche The Road From ZuffenHausen.
This year’s Porsche Pumpkin Carving Contest
Here’s the deal. Carving a pumpkin into a tribute to Porsche isn’t easy. However, it’s not rocket science either. While it’s easier to do with a rotary tool, it can be done the way I did it with a simple hand held pumpkin carving set. Carve your own pumpkin using either the Porsche 993 Pumpkin Stencil or the Porsche GT3 RS Pumpkin Stencil (along with the instructions at the end of this post) and then leave a comment on this post. Once your comment is made, I’ll send you an email address to forward me a picture of your completed pumpkin carving. Alternatively, you can take almost any picture and tone down the color in a photo editing tool so it looks similar to the GT3 RS template and then follow the same instructions as above.
All entries must be received no later than 3:00 pm EST on October 29, 2009. An independent panel of judges (my wife, dogs and a few friends) will decide which Porsche carving is the best and declare a winner on Halloween (complete with the winning picture.) What do you win? How about a copy of Porsche: The Fine Art of the Sports Car. This lavishly illustrated hard cover history of Porsche makes a great coffee table book and the pictures must be seen to be believed. Good luck and have fun carving!!!
Porsche Pumpkin Carving Instructions
1. Purchase a pumpkin large enough to manage the stencil. In my case I had someone else pick it out and deliver it.
2. Have your wife, girlfriend or significant other cut off the top and clean the pumpkin
3. Ask very nicely and she might just clean, bake and salt the pumpkin seeds for you
4. Print out the template and tape to pumpkin as securely and as flat as possible
5. Use a pin or pen to trace/outline the black areas. Remember you are only going to be cutting out those areas in black
6. Remove the template
7. Using a pumpkin carving kit or a rotary tool carve the template that you have outlined above
8. Clean up all the mess on the inside leftover from your carving
9. Put a small candle inside, light and put the top back on
10. Turn out the lights, take a picture of your latest creation and enter to win a great Porsche book!
Additional Pumpkin Carving Tips
- Never cut anything completely through until the end, just pierce and cut the design maybe 1/4″ in.
- Plan your work, don’t cut out the silhouette first only to realize you’ve got a lot of things to do on the shape itself, it will break off. Trust me, I know.
- Think of the picture’s colours/shading in terms of layers, you can re-create a lot of colour effects by using 3D shapes. ex. The taillight isn’t going to need to be as bright as a window or open space. Try cutting in just a bit, and sort of carving it out while leaving a good bit the white flesh, you’d be surprised how well it lights up.
- Cutting one line perpendicular, and then another at 45 degrees at say 1/32″ away will let you establish things like doorsills, panel gaps, etc. It doesn’t need to go deep, just has to be there.
Related Posts
Extreme Porsche Pumpkin Carving Contest
The Picasso of Porsche Pumpkin Carving
[Source: 993C4S, Adam Person]