Life is Gourd. Let’s Talk About Pumpkins.

Our last two prints of the Harper Halloween Countdown are perhaps the most obviously festive ones of the week. With today being the day before Halloween, let’s look at Harper’s Jack-o’-Lantern Time Again:

Charley Harper Jack-o’-Lantern Time Again

What an appropriate second-to-last highlight of this countdown! This piece showcases a skeleton putting a freshly carved pumpkin out in his jack-o-lantern patch. This fitting composition uses multiple fall colors, like orange and brown, while also using a bright blue to draw the viewer’s eye to the skeleton on the right side of the piece.

Harper had realistic expectations for these jack-o-lanterns, as they all are varying sizes and shapes. Many pumpkins have different silhouettes, or even some warts and bumps! Charley also used many different shapes to create different faces so that none of the lanterns are exactly the same. This helps give the composition a lot of variety and movement as one looks around the patch to soak in all the goofy pumpkins in this skeleton’s collection.

Pumpkin carving is a classic tradition, and staple, for the Halloween season! The story attached to this fun activity begins in Ireland. The tale is about a man named Stingy Jack who was said to have cheated the Devil out of some money. Once Jack died, heaven didn’t let him in, nor did hell, so he was left wandering the earth. Because Jack was roaming about, people began to carve faces out of turnips to keep his soul at bay. When the Irish began to move to the U.S., they started using pumpkins since they were more native to the new lands.

A carved turnip

Maybe this season while you carve your jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, try your hand at carving a turnip like the Irish used to do. Happy carving!