Leaves turning and cooler temperatures signal the start of pumpkin season. Pumpkin paintings can be intricate like a finished piece or you can doodle pumpkins for stress relief. During classes and meetings, pumpkins were one of my go to doodles to help me focus when I was struggling. I have two simple pumpkin doodles you can use for a variety of stress relief paintings.
Welcome to my third blogpost! I go by Artsy Bat Brooke on all my art social medias and you can find me on Instagram at @artsy.bat.brooke and on YouTube at ArtsyBatBrooke.Pumpkins are one of my special interests that have persisted since childhood and a few ceramic ones are year-round fixtures in my home. Autumn is a time where my pumpkin special interest is more acceptable, so I let myself go all out and I often feel happiest in fall. Embracing a special interest isn’t always a distraction, it can be an instant mood boost during a tough day. So, let me share one of my favorite mood boosts.
First, we are going to start with one of my favorite pumpkin doodles. This type of pumpkin is fast and allows you to do many quick pumpkins. The shape for the pumpkin is like you have a circle and pinched in the top and the bottom, then either squished the sides of the pumpkin to make a tall pumpkin, or push the top down to make a fat pumpkin.
Once you have the outside, add four curved lines to the pumpkin making almost an oval in the center then parenthesis around it. The stem can either be a curving vine with leaves, or you can draw a cut vine to make it look like a pumpkin you would find at the store.
There are a variety of pumpkin colors other than orange, though my favorite color is orange. One of my favorite pumpkin finds was a bumpy purple pumpkin. Other natural pumpkin colors include white, yellow, green, and red. I outlined all my pumpkins then chose the Smiling Hippo Paints I would use. You can either paint in the drawn outlines or do a wet-on-wettechnique and let the pumpkins be just the linework. Since there are many glitters and the pigments which make the Smiling Hippo watercolors shiny that sometimes cover up linework, you could draw the pumpkins afterwards.
The other pumpkin doodle is simple, but can make your pumpkin look more realistic. You start out with an oval in the middle, then draw a line from the upper side of the oval to the lower side of the oval. Repeat this to get the pumpkin shape.
You can then draw either a stem or a vine on top. You could end the drawing here or add more dimension with little bumps on the top to look like the back of the pumpkin. I then outlined everything in waterproof liner. If the lines are wobbly, it can make it look more realistic since pumpkins are not perfectly smooth. You can do a wet-on-wet like for the other doodle, or make it more realistic by focusing on sections and adding details.
When painting it, select not touching areas first to control the watercolors more. To give it more dimension, you can put the darker color towards the lines. For the middle section, this would be by both lines, and the outer sections would be by the lines closer to the middle.
The cool thing about using the Smiling Hippo watercolors is that some of them are granulating and can create some great texture to things. I feel like it makes my pumpkin look like what it feels to rub your hand on a pumpkin.
I hope you enjoyed these pumpkin tutorials and that you will use them for future doodles.