"And that's why, thanks to Mickey, we have cake every morning"

 Did I mention that I made a second pumpkin for Halloween?

The pumpkin, carved

For the past three years I've been carving pumpkins to commemorate a celebrity that passed away in the past twelve months. In 2009 I did Michael Jackson, in 2010 I did Dennis Hopper, and last year I did Macho Man Randy Savage. 

This year I decided to commemorate one of my favorite illustrators, Maurice Sendak. He's best remembered for Where the Wild Things Are, but when I did a google search I found plenty of WtWTA pumpkins and I wanted to do something a little more original. Another of my favorite books of his growing up was In the Night Kitchen, which has some amazing drawings and is also totally weird. I decided to depict the iconic picture of Mickey holding his jug of milk from the final page of the book. I also decided to try another new technique. This time just scratching away the skin of the pumpkin to let the candle light glow through the meat. It was a pretty tedious process. 

Fresh Air did a great retrospective show on Sendak when he passed away which included clips of Terry Gross's interviews with him throughout his career. I highly recommend listening to it, and you can do so here.

Lit up!

The best part was hearing a small child exclaim to his parent as he walked up to our house for candy, "Look, it's the boy from my book!" 

R.I.P. Maurice.