The hero of Hyrule, breaker of pottery, and friend of fairies.
Notes
Though I made this jack'o'lantern with six layers, these days, I usually try to consolidate my work into four or fewer because the human eye and the camera are unlikely to pick up on the difference between too many different levels of brightness.
This is my first layered design which used a stencil of my own making. I remember being very slow and methodical in my approach because I'd never attempted something like this. I drew on my stencil with pencil outlining all the shapes of different depths and then grading them 1 - 6 based on how dark they were. To ensure all depths were uniform, I started with the sixes and cut them fairly shallow. Then I moved to fives and cut the sixes again a little deeper. With each new layer, I cut the previously carved ones just a little deeper. For beginners like me anxious about getting their layers at the correct depths, this method is fine, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else because it is very tedious. I was so excited and happy with the result, I took it with me to a fall dance where a pumpkin carving contest was hosted on the side. To my dismay, all contest entries were displayed in a brightly-lit gymnasium such that it was impossible to make out the image I'd carved. The winner was a pumpkin painted all green with a googly eye pasted on its center—an imitation of Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. At the time of writing, I've not entered another contest since.
Stencil
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