When Death Blooms (Pumpkin) is a drawing of mine I completed in 2007. It has a sister drawing with the same name, only it's the violet version. The original concept for When Death Blooms was originally supposed to have been the Grim Reaper's garden. I drew ideas and concepts for what I wanted in my sketch book, but the project ended up changing when I decided to focus more on the individual flowers and what they would look like up close instead of portraying a whole garden, which would have led me to make smaller flowers with less notable detail. In each one of the When Death Blooms pieces, I had a background made with the intent of making the flowers stick out out more, yet I tried not to create a background that was too dull. The cutout design is similar to it's sister piece, only because they were both cut out from a bigger piece of paper that already had a design before being split up. It's also worth noting that the only reason a sister piece exists is due to the fact that I couldn't decide if I wanted the flower to be violet or pumpkin orange.

When Death Blooms (Pumpkin) was created on a small piece of 4ply bristol board. After sketching the designs, drawing ink was used to fill in the color. I used a pen to fill in the small black detail while the color was done with a paint brush. Although only four color are used on this piece, I had to create the pumpkin color on my own by creating a perfect shade of orange by mixing my red and yellow ink in a glass bottle, then adding a few drops of blue to give it a slightly more pumpkin look. The cutout was done using a utility knife due to the bristol board's thickness. The sides was to be covered using a paint brush and black ink since a white would have been exposed due to the paper's thickness.

The When Death Blooms project is something I still admire to this day. It's simple, but I feel it works. That's exactly what I intended to do with it and I'm happy with it. It's something that could have been created a year earlier than it was, but it wasn't. The funny thing about this piece's simplicity was that the small details actually took quite a while to make. It required me to be very patient and very careful since I was working with ink. One thing I always liked about this piece was the shape of the cutout, On one side, it has a smooth, nicely drawn design, but then on the other side, it suddenly changes. It looks like it was ripped off of a more complete piece of paper. The other thing I like was how well the 4ply bristol board works for pieces like this. I had trouble with the 2ply stuff I was using in 2006, mostly with durability and the 4ply paper solved all those problems. I always had the conflict of which When Death Blooms pieces l like better. I think I like the color that was used for the violet version, but I like the flower that was done for this version better. Still, they're both fun pieces overall.