How To Paint a Pumpkin Painting . . .

. . . on canvas. Or paper. Or wood.

Here’s the issue – I like to title my blog posts so you know what to expect. You know, be a good blogger, not get too cute, and maybe get some good SEO and all that.

But if you search online for “How to Paint a Pumpkin” or “Pumpkin Paintings” you get a lot of this . . .

BHG.com

and this . . .

BHG.com

Yes. I realize these are painted pumpkins. And I also realize that a lot of people like to paint their actual pumpkins rather than paint a painting of pumpkins.

But I’m not a lot of people. I like to paint pumpkin paintings. Or paintings of pumpkins.

So I was at a loss what to call this tutorial. By now though I think you understand where I’m headed, right?

Good. Ok, for the pumpkin ‘body’ I used 3 colors of Plaid paint -

• Papaya (Apple Barrel)
• Burnt Umber (Apple Barrel)
• Buttercream (Folk Art)

Both Apple Barrel and Folk Art are made by Plaid. Folk Art paint is a little thicker, but I choose paint based upon the shade of color.

Oranges can be a little tricky – too bright or too, well, too orange. Not Papaya though. To my eye, it’s the perfect shade of orange for painting pumpkins. Paintings.

For painting pumpkin paintings.

See what I mean? It’s confusing if you’re thinking about actual pumpkins and not paintings.

Moving on . . .

Basecoat your pumpkin with Papaya – or whatever shade you happen to have.

You really don’t need a pattern or template for this because pumpkins come in all shapes and sizes. But you can always download some clipart if you want.

Here’s a little tip that will make your painting a little easier – give the bottom of your pumpkin some curves. I made four but you can do more or less. Here’s why it’s important -

- when you paint your shading curves, you’re gonna connect the bottom to the top.

Instant pumpkin!

But let’s add some highlighting too.

Paint your highlights right next to the shading.

If you’ve read any of my other tutorials, you know that I almost always do it this way -

1. basecoat
2. shade
3. highlight next to shading
4. topcoat with basecoat color

When you highlight right next to the shading, you get a lot more depth and dimension.

Pretty soon you won’t need to topcoat with the base color. I only add that step to camouflage any shading or highlight areas that may look a little too intense.

If you like the way your shading and/or highlight looks without a topcoat, by all means, leave the topcoat off!

To make the pumpkin look a little rounder, add some highlights on the ‘fattest’ part of the pumpkin.

Then topcoat the whole pumpkin with Papaya. One coat will do it. As it dries, you’ll start to see the shading and highlighting peeking through.

Then just paint the top and the stem.

I didn’t do a very thorough stem tute on this painting because . . . well, I just didn’t feel like it.

There. I said it.

I was actually anxious to get to the scarecrow so I didn’t care about the stem.

(btw, thanks for all the great suggestions to fix the freaky scarecrow face. I’ll definitely give them a try!)

(if you happen to be one of those real observant types and noticed that yesterday’s post got only a few comments, my posts are also fed to The Hive and comments there don’t show up here.)

(if you’re a crafty/artsy type, check out The Hive. It’s an awesome community!)

(I think I’ll just keep writing in parentheses. It’s kinda the way my mind works anyways.)

Moving on . . .

I did a better stem tutorial last year, along with a pumpkin tutorial (which is pretty much the same as this one), but I called it Paint-It-Yourself Pumpkins.

One of these days I’m gonna trademark that – Paint It Yourself – because the acronym is PIY. Like DIY, get it?

Well, I thought it was clever.

In fact, most of my early tutorials were called PIY’s. Then I learned about SEO, keywords, and traffic. Hello?!? You can be cute and clever all you want when you have thousands of followers.

Until then, I’ll stick with How To Paint Pumpkin Paintings. Or Pictures.

Damn. I might as well give up and paint some actual pumpkins this year.

How ‘bout you? Do you paint pumpkins? (real pumpkins, not paintings, ha!) How do you paint them? Spray paint ‘em white, or with a cute witch? Do you have any tips you’d like to share?