This year, the timing for pumpkin painting was so tight. I ended up having to carve out time during the day to paint my pumpkin. I spent some time trying to think of what to paint this year – Doraemon? The Lion King? Up? Something scenic? Pizza? I looked at what I did the last few years:
2021: Squid Game
2023: Totoro
2024: The Little Prince
2025: Snoopy & Woodstock
I decided to paint the emotions from Inside Out. I didn’t pick out my own pumpkin this year, but I knew the design would work for any shape pumpkin.
The nice part about this design is that the colors are pretty simple. For my base, I used red, yellow, blue, light purple, and green. The yellow definitely took a while to dry. I should have mixed it with white before painting it on. The rest of the colors ended up much better on the pumpkin and also dried faster.
I painted the faces next. I grouped the parts by color so I didn’t have to keep cleaning the paintbrush. I started with white, then did the black. There were a few colors that I had to mix, like the light blue, pink, and orange. Quite some time after (the base layer took such a long time to dry), this was the final product!
I liked how Anger and Fear turned out the most. Disgust was pretty good too, but I could have exaggerated the emotion more. Sadness and Joy did not turn out how I wanted it to be, which was a bit unfortunate. If I had the time to, I would have wanted to repaint them both.
One thing I learned this year is that it is quite a hassle to do a design that shows something different all around the pumpkin. Next year, I would want to do a design that only covers one side of the pumpkin – it makes taking a photo of it so much easier!
Which character painting is your favorite?