the Amateur Zoologist

Friday, October 23, 2026

Jack-O-Lantern Designs 2026

2026's Pumpkin designs are here!

(Click to See Full Resolution)

Happy Halloween Everyone! As always, I want to see your carvings if you so choose to adapt any of these (or previous year) designs, send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com!

Previous Designs can be found here:

2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Friday, October 24, 2025

Jack-O-Lantern Designs 2025

2025's Pumpkin designs are here!

(Click to See Full Resolution)

Happy Halloween Everyone! As always, I want to see your carvings if you so choose to adapt any of these (or previous year) designs, send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com!

Previous Designs can be found here:

2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Monday, October 14, 2024

Jack-O-Lantern Designs 2024

I should change the name of this blog to be 'Yearly Jack-O-Lantern Design Blog.'

Yep. Still doing this. Here's this year's set:

(Click to See Full Resolution)

Happy Halloween Everyone! As always, I want to see your carvings if you so choose to adapt any of these (or previous year) designs, send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com!

Previous Designs can be found here:

2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Jack-O-Lantern Designs 2022

It's that time of year again! Here's this year's contact sheet of goofy jack-o-lantern pumpkin designs:

(click to enlarge)

It seems like the last few years have been showcasing some new developments. Three years ago was the 10 year anniversary so I shared my process, and last year was special due to turning some old and new designs into commissioned tote bags. So what was new this year you ask? Well, this year I transferred my pumpkin design template document TO THE CLOUD!

Last year gave me the kick in the butt I needed to upgrade my process. So now I'm working off of Photoshop Creative Cloud, (and in a much higher resolution thanks to an upgraded pumpkin image I got for the commission last year). And thanks to being in the cloud, and being able to work interchangeably between devices, this year marks the first year I could draw pumpkin faces while relaxing on the couch thanks to being able to work on my iPad Pro!

Happy Halloween Everyone! Once again, the same deal goes as every year: if anybody actually decides to attempt to carve any of these (like Stephanie, Nicole, Josh, Megan, and I, Laura, Nikki, or Mike, Nicole, and Bonnie, did) please send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com and I'll post them up here! That goes for previous years' pumpkin designs as well. You have until the end of the month! I will post all physical Jack-O-Lantern carvings together on Halloween.

Previous Designs can be found here:

2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

Monday, January 17, 2022

A DreamWorks Animation Christmas

I was invited by the fine folks in Digital Marketing at DreamWorks Animation to create a drawing of my choice for them to showcase on social media for Christmas last year. They said it could be anything of my choice but had to be something in the spirit of the season, and if I could fit in some DreamWorks characters, that would be great.

I had recently acquired an iPad and this was one of my first drawings on it, learning Photoshop for iPad as I went. Here's what I came up with:

Click to Enlarge

It was a fun drawing to do, and even more fun to see the fury I created in the Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram threads by choosing to put Megamind on the naughty list. To be fair I did debate this a little but ultimately decided it was more on-brand for his perception of himself. I wasn't entirely sure how this drawing was going to be received by followers of DreamWorks, but I was happy to see this nugget generate some engagement for the Digital Marketing team.

I was also happy for the people who picked up my little nod to Dave the Octopus from Penguins of Madagascar (who will always hold a special part in my heart since I put so much work into rigging him many years ago).

And apologies for those who were upset that I did my own Santa Claus design instead of using North from Rise of the Guardians. I definitely considered it, but ultimately didn't want to worry too much about doing justice to another artist's character design, and wanted to focus on doing an original Santa design of my own. This also helped me complete the project as I had a lot going on the end of last year.

Anyway, that's my little story about this drawing. It was fun to try out new workflows, and use the iPad to get it done quicker than my typical digital painting workflow.

Evan

Friday, November 5, 2021

Watercolor Fun

This summer I started experimenting with using watercolors in the hope to start doing more drawing while out hiking and birdwatching:

Great Egret

Red-footed Booby

Giraffatitan brancai sketch

Giraffatitan brancai + watercolors

I also used Inktober this year to practice a bit as well, and thought I'd cross post some of those paintings here:

Red Knot

Raven

Thalassodromeus sethi

Helmeted Hornbill

Inktober 2021

I thought last year was a great experience to push my artistic skills out of my comfort zone, and so decided to participate in Inktober again this year. I really embraced the limitations of the physical media and focused on being consistent over perfection. I also tried pushing myself further by playing with watercolors and other mixed traditional media this year. I like some more than others for sure, but am happy to have completed it among all the other things I'm working on. For ease of acces, here's my complete Inktober 2021 compiled in one place:

Prompt 1: Crystal