Boo! It’s pumpkin painting time! This is one of the few times in the year that I paint, so there was a lot to look forward to!
First, I had to think of what to paint. Last year, I painted Totoro, which I was pretty satisfied with. I thought about doing Doraemon (I also wanted to do Doraemon last year) or Hello Kitty, but I wanted to do something different this year. As I was looking out at the sky, I suddenly had a random idea to do something from The Little Prince – and so I started looking up reference images and went with that!
I chose a regular shaped orange pumpkin – not too short, not too tall. There were also white pumpkins to choose from, but the shapes of the orange pumpkins looked better. I started by covering my entire pumpkin with black paint. Since it took quite some time for the base layer to dry last year, I started earlier in the day with the base layer. I painted it black, let it dry, then painted over some of the spots where I could still see some of the orange pumpkin.
After the black paint was dry, I grabbed the other colors I needed – blue, red, orange, yellow, and white. The black paint already looked better than my pumpkin last year. It was much smoother and you can’t really see all the brush strokes! Unfortunately, even though the shape of the pumpkin was good, there were some dents in it.
I painted the ground with dark blue and small strokes of light blue, yellow, and white on top. Next was the fox. I mixed the red and orange together for the fox’s color, then added a bit of gray for some texture. Using my painted fox to help decide the size of the prince, I painted the prince with a light green coat and red scarf. I was worried that his hair would be hard to paint and end up being just a blob, but it was not that bad! The paint brush strokes helped make the hair look a bit more natural.
The fox and the prince turned out bigger than I would have liked (or maybe my pumpkin was too small), and didn’t leave much room for the flower I had originally wanted to paint. The fox also looks a bit wide – I should try using a thinner brush next year. To finish it up, I carefully added the stars one dot at a time.
After finishing my pumpkin, I realized I should have checked all sides of the pumpkin to find the roundest shape before deciding where the “front” of my pumpkin would be, but overall, I think my pumpkin turned out pretty good! I had a lot of fun painting my pumpkin this year – what should I paint next year?