Part 2 of Nitrozac's Mac O'Lantern tutorial!

Step Eight: Using a straight edge tool, gently peel away the pumpkin skin on the gray areas. It is now time to carve your pumpkin in the dark. Place a small light source in the pumpkin, a nightlight or a few clear christmas lights. Using the U shaped tool, carve away at the gray space. Whatever you carve out will appear lighter. You may notice that you have to play with the angles of the carving to let light in some areas. For instance, I had to cut into the pumpkin at the appropriate angle around her hair to let the light through from my point of view. This part is challenging, but fun, ... here comes Ellen! Use your printout and reference to it throughout the carving process. The eyes, and nose and mouth are where the likeness lies. There will probably be a number of times when you think to yourself... "curse the Great Pumpkin!! I've wrecked it!" but keep the faith... things will slowly start to come together. (And if you did wreck it, you can always make Ellen Feiss pie!) BTW, you can appreciate why Apple used Ellen in their ads. She has a perfectly oval shaped face, great bone structure, smooth skin, almond eyes, a straight, nicely shaped nose, and very full lips. She is quite photogenic, and fun to watch in those ads.

Step Nine: Ellen is in the details. My favorite part of this pumpkin carving is the effect of the eyes. I did this by leaving pumpkin skin around the eyelashes, pupil, and iris edge. The drilled highlights work their magic too. I carefully sculpted the area in the eyes, sometimes with a pushpin, and strategically stabbing right through the pulp with the mini saw to let light in certain areas. Unfortunately, the pumpkin skin I left on the upper lip is nowhere near as dark as I would have liked. There is so much light coming through her face that her upper lip is back lit. Oh well, this was my first human faced pumpkin carving! The Happy Mac was my first pumpkin carving. I don't remember carving pumpkins as a kid, though I probably did, I just remember being disturbed by insides of pumpkins and it kind of turned me off to the whole thing. Step Ten: Every now and then stand back and survey the carving, using your Pumpkin Sense to know when to stop. It helps to take digital pictures of the carving to see how it looks and decide when it's finished. It's better to stop short than carve out too much. If you do carve out too much, you can use some of the discarded pulp to plug in areas.

Portraits by Nitrozac!