This is my entry to the Jack O' Lantern Challenge. I saw the contest on instructables while scrolling through a project, and decided that I'd take a swing at making a Jack O' Lantern. Here are the final results, and in the following steps I'll explain how it was made (with pictures too!)

Step 1: The Basic Shape

I started off by modeling a basic pumpkin, aiming to make it semi realistic in shape. I first made a circle with 24 vertices then selected every other one and scaled them in slightly. Then I extruded that vertically and made 7 horizontal edgeloops, which were then scaled to make it more of a ball shape. After that I extruded the base of the stem which I would finish later. The last thing I did to the base was make an extrusion inward so the walls had thickness.

Step 2: Making the Carved Areas

Here I took inspiration from a doodle I made during Chemistry class and used blender's retopo tool to draw on the shapes I wanted to carve out. I then scaled those shapes outward and made an extrusion inward through the base pumpkin. Then I split the mesh that I had made using the retopo tool into smaller portions so that my computer could more easily handle it. Then I used the boolean tool in blender to remove the carved areas.