Scarecrow
2007
In the interest of trying something new this year, I expanded my usual jack-o-lantern carving into the creation of a full-scale scarecrow. This monstrosity was loosely based on a variety of scarecrows featured in Tim Burton's film adaptation of Sleepy Hollow, but I took great liberties with the design of the pumpkin head for my version.
Below are two photos of this menacing head:
This pumpkin had a very thick rind, which allowed me to carve the teeth as deeply 3-dimensional forms, curving inward toward one another. The eyes were not cut all the way through - instead, I retained a thin layer of rind, so that the eyes have a glowing, luminous quality.
The horns and nose were created with large carrots, which I whittled down to sharp points. I hollowed out the nose carrot as much as possible, so that the nose would glow a bit, at least near its connection with the face.
This head was then attached to a wooden frame that I put together with some scrap lumber, a few screws, and some natural fiber twine:
To this frame, I attached "arms" of dead tree branches (pruned from the trees in my yard earlier in the year), and filled out the "body" by wrapping bundles of flexible, woody vines around the frame, which gave the scarecrow an interesting, wicker appearance while also helping to conceal the underlying frame:
The figure was completed with the addition of some tattered fabric, created from an old bedsheet - to make this clothing appear as if it had been hanging on the figure for years, I ripped it to shreds, and then dirtied it with a muddy mixture of water and soil from the yard:
The entire assembly was suspended from nearby tree branches with lengths of jute twine - here on Maui, with our rocky ground and very windy conditions, there was no chance that the thing would remain standing simply by driving a post into the ground, so the ropes were necessary to keep it upright. One advantage of this approach was the fact that the figure moved in coordination with the swaying of the tree branches in the strong wind, so the figure had an animated quality, rather than just standing still. I painted the twine ropes with india ink in order to render them less visible, but I painted the tree-branch arms with white gesso in order to make them more visible.
For a final touch, I took some short lengths of twine and separated the fibers at one end, forming wispy bundles that I could tie to the tree branch arms to simulate a sort of cobwebby, hanging moss:
Not so scary in broad daylight, perhaps:
But, wait - it gets scarier...
Below are two photos of the finished Scarecrow as it appeared on Halloween night, to scare the pee out of all of the neighborhood kids.
It stood a little over six feet tall. Here it is as seen from a kid's eye view:
