Tips and tricks from a professional pumpkin carver

Halloween is just six days away, and for many families, carving pumpkins is a memorable and essential part of the holiday. But some of the most creative and crafty pumpkin carvers are pushing the boundaries beyond simple triangle cutouts. Joining us live in the studio, and I want you to step over here so we can see you, professional pumpkin carver Paulina Goff. Thanks for coming in. These are beautiful. First, tell me, how long does it take you to do something like this, and where do you get the ideas for these creations? So my average pumpkin probably takes about eight hours to do something a little bit more detailed. And a lot of times I'll either make something up or I'll look for a concept art online, just something that really kind of catches my eye and fits with my style. It's very clear just looking at the detail here. You are an artist. How did you go from this to pumpkin carving? How did you get into pumpkin carving? I actually stumbled on it when I was really young. I've always carved pumpkins and always done art. And so when I was out of high school, I said, well, I kind of want to do something fun that I could make money doing art. And I stumbled on the opportunity to do it live and I fell in love with it ever since. So when you start, where do you start when you're picking the perfect pumpkin? What kind of pumpkin do you look for? Does it depend on your design? Definitely depends on the design. If I have a concept that I already know I need to carve, if I'm just going for a pumpkin and purely inspirational. I definitely will go for a larger style of pumpkin. This specific species of pumpkin has very thick skin. It's very heavy. When you're going for jack-o'-lantern size, like a medium pumpkin, oftentimes the really smooth ones have a little bit easier skin to carve than the really bumpy ones. And I notice you kind of shave off the skin before you start carving. Is that what you'd recommend people always do? It depends on your concept, but if you're trying to put something on its face like that, usually I start by just kind of shaving off a canvas. Do you use just like a potato peeler? What do you use? I use a lot of ceramic sculpting tools. Ah, okay. Okay. And so what is this going to be? I see the very beginnings, the indentations of like eye sockets and a face. Yeah, this one I was just feeling out the pumpkin. I don't know what it's going to be. I'm just going to let it speak to me, and I'll see what it ends up shaping out as. Wow, because I was going to ask, you know, every time I do the very mediocre elementary pumpkin carving with my kids, we always kind of trace out the shapes ahead of time and then saw the pumpkin. But you take a completely different approach. You don't even draw it on there first. Most of the time, not. It really depends on what the purpose of the carving is for. If I'm carving for a client, I might have a concept already. I might kind of sketch it with the tool. If I'm just doing it for fun, then I kind of just see it as I go. And sometimes the pumpkin changes what I had originally planned just based off, you know, where the grooves and the valleys are. Do you do anything to the pumpkin ahead of time to kind of preserve it or make it last while you're doing all the carving and beyond? I've heard people say, oh, wash it in vinegar and then it'll preserve it. Is that true? Yeah. So I always wash the pumpkin down first at a minimum, right, because it's coming from the field. It usually is pretty dirty. And it just kind of keeps the surface clean because it does attract a lot of dirt. But in terms of preserving it, I know it's going to rot, so I don't hope for much. But I do use vinegar every now and then to just kind of delay a little bit of that mold, especially if I'm working on something that will last a long time that I want to last, you know, three days. Do you just take like a towel with vinegar? I actually mist it with a mist bottle. Yeah, I find that if you just lightly mist it, you don't want it to pool too much, so just a light mist. If you're going to store it overnight, put a little saran wrap over it, things like that. Okay. All right. For us average pumpkin carvers, what should we do first when we're going to take on a creation like this? It's never going to look as good as yours, but for the average carver, what are the things we need to think about? I would definitely start with the health of the pumpkin. Okay. You know, picking the right pumpkin helps it last longer, helps it have a good experience. The stem is a good indication of health. Looking for any soft spots, things like fat any any funky bruises um that that's just step one um i usually like i said kind of like go for a smoother skin they tend to be less dense and it's a little easier to get your saw through and other than that just picking something that you truly enjoy to carve i feel like it's more enjoyable when you choose something that you really like when you're carving so yeah well i noticed you don't saw off the top and scoop everything out right yeah i'm most often will sculpt on the face of pumpkins. A lot of times I actually will take pumpkin pieces and put them onto a structure that I'll create a standing sculpture out of. But when I do sculpt it into the pumpkin, I rarely actually pull out the seeds. Most of the time it's going to be surface work with a top light as opposed to a gutted pumpkin. And that probably makes it last a lot longer. It does. It does. But once you get a certain amount of depth, it will rot the same amount no matter what, okay, how many of these do you carve and imagine this is like busy season for you uh that's really hard to say this season i've actually carved a lot of giant pumpkins so instead of taking a whole bunch of you know medium large pumpkins and adding them together to make a piece i'll you know take a giant and that will take me three days or something like that so when you talk about giant how big are we talking about uh 1500 to 2000 pounds so those Those are like the pumpkins that end up at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Okay. And so you're an artist and a sculptor by trade. Do you do this just for fun or in addition to? I actually do this solely during carving season. So September through November-ish, I'm just full into pumpkins. And then during the rest of the year, I actually work in a law office. Oh, my goodness. You're multi-talented. That's amazing. All right. Well, we're going to keep checking in with you throughout the show. We're going to see your progress. Any indication? I know you said you were waiting to see how this goes. Yeah But any idea what it might end up as? Well, to me, I'm seeing a little like a cat face, maybe? It's definitely going to be a face. But we'll see if I want to make him happy or creepy. Okay. And then this guy over here, that's just a creepy monster. That is. He's just a creepy monster. How do you make the teeth like that? You know, I had to carve the teeth as close to the segment as possible because they shrivel up really fast. So you just use a very sharp knife and some tools to chip little pieces away. But the knife is imperative. Do not make it squishy. So the average person, you need a lot of skill and talent and the right tools to make it look like this. But I like some of the tips you have for us about finding the right pumpkin, misting it with vinegar to preserve it. And this technique of just shaving off the outside sounds like a good one. So, Paulina, thank you so much. We're going to check in with you, see how your progress is. I'm excited to see how it turns out.