![]() ![]() Courtesy of Justin Boeser Justin Boeser was invited as a featured artist for the 2023 Sinister Halloween Convention in Sacramento. Courtesy of Justin Boeser Boeser carves a pumpkin for the 2023 Sinister Halloween Convention in Sacramento. Courtesy of Justin Boeser Justin Boeser carves a pumpkin for the 2023 Sinister Halloween Convention in Sacramento. Justin Boeser went pumpkin shopping before the 2023 Sinister Halloween Convention in Sacramento. You can really draw anything on a pumpkin.” “Just make some marks on a pumpkin, and see what happens when you light it up. “It’s not about putting down more shading, it’s about pulling out the light,” he said. But with Jack-o-Lanterns, the pumpkin provides the shading, while carving provides the highlights. With drawings, the white page provides the highlights, while your pencil draws the shading. Instead of shading with a pencil, you’re shading with sandpaper,” Boeser explained.īut pumpkins and paper are kind of opposites. “It’s how you create things that look three-dimensional, like you would with a drawing. For the at-home carver, a cheap wood chisel, speedball carving tool, kitchen knife, and sandpaper will do the trick. To explore the gradient, professional pumpkin carvers use sculpting and fleshing tools, keyhole saws and x-acto knives, hole cutters and fine cutters, and even needles and sharpened bobby pins. ![]() So if you want to elevate your basic Jack-O-Lantern don’t carve completely through the pumpkin. And between those two values is an array of colors. The outermost layer is dark, while the innermost layer is light. Like onions and ogres, pumpkins have layers. Tip: Forget everything you know about traditional artīoeser’s first recommendation: forget everything you know about traditional art, because the pumpkin carving craft has all new fundamentals and properties. Translating a two-dimensional drawing on paper to a three-dimensional object - which is essentially a misshapen sphere with grooves, ridges, and bumps - isn’t so straightforward. There was a learning curve to Jack-O-Lanterns, literally. Again, I had never tried it, but now it’s my thing.” “I didn’t know that pumpkin art was something I could do. And it’s been a huge part of my life ever since,” he said. “It just very quickly became such a huge part of my life starting maybe the week after that. His first foray “wasn’t very good,” but it was good enough for the job. He submitted his art portfolio and was quickly invited to carve an audition pumpkin. Honestly, I missed the art here,” he said.Īlmost by chance, he saw a Craigslist ad for pumpkin artists to work at the Minnesota Zoo for the annual Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular. Courtesy of Justin Boeser missed the community here. Just cause he could draw portraits, doesn’t mean he could carve pumpkins.Įventually Boeser moved back to the Twin Cities, partly because he missed home, and partly to escape California’s heat, wildfires, and cost-of-living.Ī Jack-O-Lantern of an owl and the moon. His family encouraged him to learn, but Boeser never seriously considered it. He still draws mermaids once in a while, but he’s added more subjects to his repertoire, including family and pet portraits.īoeser discovered the world of professional Jack-O-Lanterns at a pumpkin carving event in college and was thoroughly impressed by the art. He likes the old school methods: pen-and-paper drawings, black-and-white ink drawings, and paintings. Though Boeser loves all things spooky and scary, pumpkins are not his go-to medium. He lived in California for 12 years, working as a library services assistant for Sacramento Public Library, a library supervisor for Placer County Library, and briefly as an art instructor. After finishing high school at the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Golden Valley, he moved back to California to study art at Solano Community College and the University of California, Davis. As soon as he figured out how to curve the mermaid’s tail, it was over.īoeser is a California native, but moved to Minneapolis when he was 7. ![]() He filled notebooks with doodles of different Pokémon, and things escalated when he started drawing mermaids. Granted, Boeser has been an artistic person since the dawn of Pokémon. You might be surprised at how great your doodle looks,” he said. “It almost doesn’t even matter what you put on ’em sometimes, because they’re just beautiful by default. Just ask Justin Boeser, a student supervisor at Magrath Library and part-time professional pumpkin carver. A Jack-O-Lantern of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Courtesy of Justin Boeser an artistic Jack-O-Lantern isn’t as difficult as it seems. ![]()
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