How to Paint a White Pumpkin on Canvas
Thank you so much for all of the love on my fall mantel with the pumpkin painting! I filmed the process so I wanted to share with you how to paint white pumpkin on canvas acrylic painting tutorial! If you are looking for my other paint a pumpkin on canvas tutorial, that post is here. This pumpkin tutorial painting is easy for beginners, even if you feel like you can’t really paint, you can do this because it doesn’t require any art talent at all! It’s different because it uses a chip brush and a palette knife, which creates a really cool texture, but you can use a round brush or flat brush if you feel more comfortable doing so. I love painting with palette knives. That’s how I created this abstract. With this pumpkin painting project, the more lopsided your pumpkin turns out, the better! Step-by-step instructions are under the video.
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This entire tutorial right now is in video format and takes about 24 minutes to watch the entire thing. I’ve broken it up into 3 separate videos for ease of watching. The front half of the stem painting portion is on the back end of the pumpkin painting portion (because I realized I cropped it weird and didn’t realize it until it was too late to fix it.). You can find supplies needed for the project here. There is a complete supply list at the end of the post. Right now the video is not closed captioned, but that will be coming soon. I have a quick recap of the steps listed below each video if you need a quick step by step refresh or clarification.
Supply list: Canvas size of choice, chip brush, angled palette knife (or paintbrush), skinny palette knife, heavy body acrylic paint in titanium white (or orange paint), off white, black,sap green, burnt orange,raw umber, periwinkle blue, yellow ochre. Find supplies here.
Watch Part 1- Base-coating the Canvas Before Painting Your Rustic Pumpkin
Part 2- Painting the pumpkin–video
Painting the white pumpkin step by step: Creating the shape of the pumpkin
Step 1: This step is after base coating your entire canvas first. To paint your pumpkin, you can just go for it, or use piece of chalk to draw a thin line sideways football shape in the the center of the canvas. Place it in the middle of where you want your pumpkin to be. Leave room at the top of the canvas for a stem. One each side of that football shape, paint a letter “C” connecting the top and the bottom of the pumpkin to the football. Repeat on both sides. This creates the pumpkin basic shape.
Step 2: After painting your pumpkin shapes, use your palette knife or flat brush to paint in the chalk lines using even strokes in the entire pumpkin with the white paint (if you want an orange pumpkin use an orange hue paint). Leave the edges where the C’s touch unpainted as shading for the pumpkin ridges.
Step 3: If you find you’ve painted in your ribs and there is no difference between the pumpkin ridges, you can either do touch-ups with the black background paint, or you can use a color such as burnt umber or raw umber to define the ribs of the pumpkin.
Step 4: Use slightly watered down black paint to paint a shadow and create darker shading under the pumpkin. This step is shown in the painting a pumpkin stem video.
A few tips to painting your rustic pumpkin:
Pick up some white heavy bodied acrylic paint on your angled palette knife. Use the knife to drag the paint down the canvas on a slight angle in a football shape in the middle then pick up more paint as needed. Paint a shallow letter “C” on each side of the football making the ribs. Fill in as much or as little as preferred. Add small touches of blue paint onto the ribs and off-white/cream colored paint to add depth and interest. Then add the stem by picking up raw umber ( or another brown paint) and wiggling the paint onto the canvas at the top. Once you have the base painted, your ready to paint the stem!
Part 3-Watch : How to Paint a Pumpkin Stem Here
Decorating for fall or Halloween? You can also find the pillow version or art print/canvas version of this painting to purchase here.
