We highly recommend drawing your pumpkin face on paper. It helps to get your pumpkin carving ideas on paper before carving the pumpkin. It’s like the old carpenters saying: measure twice and cut once. In this case, the measurement is the drawing on paper as paper is a much cheaper canvas than a pumpkin! Once you have the drawing perfect on paper, go ahead trace it over to the pumpkin.

When it comes to pumpkin carving faces, we recommend separating the drawing into features. Experiment with different eyes, noses and mouths. Then, mix and match. Just remember that drawing pumpkin carving patterns is different from a regular drawing. You have to consider that the pumpkin must always be connected. Take eyes, for example. For a normal eye, you might draw three elliptical or circular type shapes: one for the outline of the eye and eyelid, one for the pigmented portion that distinguishes us as having blue eye, brown eyes or hazel eyes and one for the pupil. Well, with pumpkin carving that doesn’t work because once you carve out the outline of the eye, there is nothing in the middle left to carve! We have seen people effectively carve out various depths into the pumpkin wall to create various illusions and maintain the ability to draw more like a regular drawing. However, we just want you to think about some of the challenges in pumpkin carving designs before you put pen to paper and start drawing.