Watercolor pumpkins in 3 easy steps

Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. In today's video I thought it would be fun to show you how easy it can be to paint watercolor pumpkins. I took the whole process and simplified it into three steps to show you the best way to paint pumpkins. So let's get started. First we're going to kind of look at it in a sketched version so you can visualize where we're going with the painting process. So pumpkins are typically circular, they can be ovals, they can be kind of any random shape within the circular realm. They have a stem and they have a center section that is also long, kind of like an oval, and as the sections come out from that center section as we're going to be painting them, they're going to be more moon-shaped and they're going to get thinner as we get farther away from the center because the perspective is curving around and we're seeing less of the most important part to getting the perspective right when painting pumpkins is to make sure that the center section is the longest by just a little bit. So each of the sections on the sides are going to start a little bit higher and end a little bit higher than the center section. The only thing is you don't want it to end too high. So in this example it's ending too high, that's going to be too much distance between those sections, but you also don't want your sections to end at the same level. So just make sure that your sections on the outside of the center section start a little bit higher than the section before and end a little bit higher than the section before it as well. And that will become clearer as we paint it. So let's just jump into the painting process. I'm using a size four, I'm painting these on the tinier side, I love painting tiny, and I'm mixing together an orange using cad yellow and magenta. I'm also using arches watercolor paper. Now this is my center section of my pumpkin and this is going to determine the shape and the size and the height of my pumpkin. So whatever height you want, whatever roundness you want, if you want it to be a really wide pumpkin you'll make that center section a lot bigger and wider. If you want it to be very thin it will be thinner. So this is step one, painting the section. We'll start with that center section and then very carefully, leaving a little bit of white space to represent the sectioning part of the pumpkin, we're going to paint the more moon shapes on either side of that center section. So like I mentioned at the beginning of the video, we're going to start these outer sections a little bit higher than the section before. So since the section before was the middle section, we start it a little bit higher, we end it a little bit higher than the bottom of that center section, and then we repeat making each of the more outer sections thinner as we finish the shape of the pumpkin. Then paint a few bumps along the top to connect everything and represent the sections in the back of the pumpkin. Now we're going to step two of painting a pumpkin and that is creating highlights and shadows. We are going to create highlights by lifting some of our color out, which is what I just did, using a damp brush without any color on it. I can lift some of the color out, tap it on my paper towel, and continue lifting more out. I have decided to lift the color from the right side of my pumpkin and therefore I'm going to focus my shadowy colors on the left side of my pumpkin. We don't need to use black for our shadows, we can just use a deeper, more punchy variation of the same orange for our shadows. And you can see I'm focusing a lot more shadowy color on more of the sections on the left side and just a little bit of the shadowy color kind of where the sections are meeting each other at those lines on the right side of the pumpkin. And once you have finished step two, now we move on to the final step and that is adding your stem. It's really fun to add pumpkin stems because they can really be any shape and length. They're really fun to paint. Use a green or a brown for your stem. I'm using sap green mixed with a little bit of magenta to create some moodiness, tucking some of this color between the sections where it's meeting the pumpkin. And then you can just leave it like that. You can create any shape you want for your stem or you can add some fun little tendrils and vines coming off of your pumpkin stem. Just make sure that you're using very light pressure so that this portion is not very thick. It kind of ruins the illusion if the tendrils are really thick so you can switch to a smaller brush or just use the tip of your brush with light pressure. Don't be afraid of disconnected lines. I think the disconnectedness also makes it feel really thin which can be nice. And then you can just kind of tap the shape of your brush to create some rough leaves and then that's it. There's your pumpkin. We're going to do this a few more times so you can see some different variations and you can see how I apply it with different colors and so that you can watch the process again because it's kind quick. These are quick, easy, takes you a couple of minutes but the effect overall is so so nice. So this is more of a bluish green pumpkin. I'm using some of that green that was on my palette and added some cerulean to it. Again, starting with that center section and then coming out. I'm making sure that my outer sections are starting just a tiny bit above, ending a tiny bit above and I'm leaving the white space to represent the sections. If some of your white space gets lost that's okay. Don't worry too much about the white space if it gets lost. I would wait for your painting to completely dry and then when you're adding some of that shadow color you can create some of that dimension and the look of the sections in the pumpkin with some of those darker colors. And you can see on the right side I kind of went more lumpy with this pumpkin and I think that's really fun. Pumpkins come in some pretty funny shapes so they don't have to be perfectly circular. I think it's really fun when they're not perfectly circular. And then phase two we are lifting color out and we are adding just that same color, that same greenish blue that I used for the base color. I added it back in on the left side. So it's a fun trick of watercolor too when everything is still wet you can use the same color to kind of tap back in as your paint starts to dry and it creates a darker look. So that's all I did for the shadows on that one and then I added a more simple brown or on the brown side stem. Curved it over to the left and I'm finished with that pumpkin. Now we're going to make a taller pumpkin. So you can see this center section is a lot longer and more narrow so that it's not awkward when I make this a tall pumpkin. You can't really make the outer sections thinner to create a tall pumpkin if the center section is not all so tall and thin to begin with. And you can see here too that I don't need to keep the white space perfectly open in every part of it. Even if there's a sliver of some white space showing but I am accidentally connecting it in another space, I think it still looks really nice as long as you can see generally the sections between them. I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's a loose interpretation of a pumpkin right? We aren't really painting with a lot of detail here. It's just supposed to be fun. So now we can add our stem and we're going to move on to the next pumpkin and this one I wanted to show you how to make it even wider. So my center section is a little bit wider but it's definitely more of a teardrop shape because I'm also making it squat. So if I was making it a wide pumpkin that was also tall I wouldn't have to make it so teardroppy but because it is a more squat and wide pumpkin I need to have that first shape really represent that. Then all of the other shapes almost have a guide so I know exactly where to place them because I know that you know higher rule of how to place the sections and I already have that first section as the shape and so everything kind of really comes together on its own. And if you're moving quick enough too, I don't to finesse some of the shapes so everything is even or how you want it. There's a lot of movement that can happen while the paint is still wet to get the pumpkin shapes how you need it before you can move on to the next step which is the highlight and the shadow. I really love how the highlights and the shadows turned out on this one. I think it makes the right side of the pumpkin look really bright to have more shadow on that left side. And then I thought it would be really fun because this one's more squat to go really long with my stem and I placed it quick enough that it blended in. Now this pumpkin on the bottom I wanted to show you how if you wanted to go even looser with it and not focus so much on exact shapes you could create that same feeling of a center section and coming circular and having smaller slivers on the side and leaving a bit of white space here and there lifting some paint out for a highlight adding shadow and you could get the same effect with a more looser feel. Also for this one I thought it would be fun to add some of the bumps from like the warty pumpkins that are out there. So I just used straight magenta in a very thick concentration so that it would stay while my pumpkin was still wet and then added some deeper more magenta shadows to this one as well. I really really love how this one turned out. Added a more simple stem because this one has a lot going on with the warts and the texture and the and the shape of it all. But yeah that's a more loose interpretation of a pumpkin that could be fun once you feel like you have mastered the sections and planning it out in your head you can try to be a little bit more loose with it. Now your pumpkins are done. They're so cute you followed all three steps and they look great but I am going to show you how one final step will take these pumpkins to the next level but it's a very easy step that we've already done in step two and that is to add shadow. So we already know that watercolor dries lighter and that it is a layering medium and so after your pumpkins have completely dried you're just going to take that same color you used for your pumpkins in the shadowy areas and we're going to layer it again in the shadowy areas. So magenta and cad yellow to make a punchy orange for our orange pumpkins, a bit of sap green with cerulean for our greenish blue pumpkins and we are going to layer this deeper shadowy color into the shadowy areas on the pumpkins that we have already put there. And keep in mind as you're adding this darker value that we want three values present light medium and dark and so we don't need to cover up our medium value that we had from the first layer we just want to add to it. We want to create this beautiful blend of different values to create contrast because our highlight on the right side of our pumpkin is only as good as our shadow on the left side of our pumpkin and it's not going to be bright enough if we aren't adding a dark enough value on the left side as well. And to finish off our pumpkins I mixed together a dark greenish brown to add that to the left side of our stems to give us some more contrast and create a shadow. And that is how to paint watercolor pumpkins in three easy steps. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please let me know if you have any questions down below and I will see you all next time. Bye guys!