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| 10/28/16 brush pen, colored pencils |
When I was a kid, our Halloween tradition was to get a
pumpkin from the grocery store. (Back then, the only choice was the ordinary
orange kind – not the 76 varieties of stripes, spots, multi colors and gross
warts that you can get now.) I would use a marker to draw the face. I hated the
mess of cleaning out the guts, so my mom got stuck with that task. Finally my
dad would use his pocket knife to carve my design. A candle would go inside,
and our Jack-o-lantern would greet trick-or-treaters on the porch on Halloween
night.
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| 10/28/16 brush pen, colored pencils |
Friday afternoon brought back those fun memories for
me at the Northgate Community Center,
which sponsored a free pumpkin
carving contest. I get enough of cleaning out squash guts whenever we have them
for dinner, so I declined on the free pumpkin. Instead, I brought my sketchbook.
Wherever I looked, families were hard at work. I was
impressed by all the kids who took their task very seriously. Wincing a bit, I watched
a young girl wielding a grown-up knife to carve her pumpkin with much care and determination.
Another young girl held a paint brush in each hand to decorate hers. Some kids
simply enjoyed scooping out pumpkin innards with their bare hands.
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| 10/28/16 brush pen, colored pencils |
Children weren’t the only ones being creative. While dad
entertained the child, a mom wearing a festive fairy tiara plopped a huge
pumpkin in her lap and followed a design worked out on paper as she carved.
Since I don’t have any young kids in my life, this is the
kind of community event I probably would have skipped before I became a
sketcher. But with my sketchbook, I got to join the fun – without all the
sticky pumpkin guts.
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| 10/28/16 ink, colored pencils |
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