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Pumpkin Jack-o-lantern Painting Tutorial for Beginners Halloween
Sep 8, 2023
I am back behind the easel once more with this Halloween Jack-o-Lantern cutie. This quick, hands-on tutorial will quickly get you paint slapping some pigment on your canvas, making a pumpkin painting that will adorn your Halloween decor. Grab a brush and let's get painting!
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Hello my gorgeous beautiful wonderful queen bees
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It is your girl Amanda, the best artist, and in this video we are harking back to our love for Halloween
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with this super cute not-so-spooky jack-o'-lantern pumpkin painting ready to cover your walls with ghoulish gooey and happy hauntings this Halloween
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Let's do this! Yaw! You'll just need a few items for this pumpkin tutorial, including any size canvas
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In here I used a 5x7, a 3 quarter inch flat wash brush, a number one detail round brush
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three popsicle sticks or cardboard, twine, a cup of water, a towel, and a palette with some
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orange, yellow, black, green, and white acrylic paint. Also, you'll want a glue gun or some type of adhesive for this project
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And with all your supplies gathered and ready to go, it is time to get super spooky
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Before we dive into this tutorial, I wanted to quickly tell you about my newest class that I just launched on Skillshare called
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The Magic of Acrylics, Acrylic Painting Fundamentals for Beginners. If you've always wanted to make some paint slapping magical art with acrylics, have occasionally dabbled here and there on the canvas
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or just want to brush up on your acrylic painting skills and learn something new, this is the class for you
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And in this class, I will show you all the supplies that you'll need to complete any acrylic painting, including my own personal favorites, as well as developing a keen eye to expertly choose the art supplies that are custom tailored to your needs
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You'll learn specific techniques that'll get you tickling your canvas faster, like how to create gorgeous 3D textures with paint
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And you'll learn how to make color your very best friend by learning how to mix any color in the rainbow
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And more importantly, you'll learn the key mindset tricks to keep you motivated and wanting to make art all the time
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So if you're interested in learning more about the Magic of Acrylics class, be sure to click on my Skillshare class link in the description below where you can get it free for 14 days
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So check it out and make some really cool paint slapping magic and finally let your inner artist out
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Now back to the tutorial. Let's go ahead and get started. I'm going to take my three quarter inch flat wash brush because we are going to slap some background paint onto our canvas here
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So what we're going to do is we're going to just slap some orange as the background
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Now, of course, if you don't have any orange, all you need to do is just mix equal parts red and yellow and mix those together until you get an orange that you like
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And I figured because I'm using a lot of orange, I'm just going to get it straight from the tube. I'm going to get my three quarter inch, dip it in water, and then I'm just going to grab some orange
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Then we're going to start painting it right on top. And now I'm doing vertical lines just to lay down the color
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I have to say, it is really nice to have my studio set back up again and to be painting
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We've had a very, very interesting couple of months because we moved to a house
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So we're first time home buyers, which has been very interesting during pandemic
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trying to buy a house in the middle of a pandemic while trying to raise, you know, like a three month
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old has been very, very action packed. So you can only imagine how crazy life was for us for a while
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Now we finally were able to get into a house after months and months and months of searching
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If you guys ever wanted me to go into that story a little bit more, we can do that in another video
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but it was nuts. We're now settled in. I got my studio all set up and I'm gonna have a video of
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that coming out soon, just showing you guys what my studio is and how I went ahead and reorganized
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it. And I kind of used the same, the KonMari methods to organize everything, which just made
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my heart sing. So we have a nice looking background. I'm just going to wipe off the excess paint on my
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brush and do a little swish of the brush in the water. I'm going to start to imitate what the
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rind of the pumpkin would look like. You know, like those little bumps that you usually see in a
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pumpkin. I'm going to take that yellow that I have and then I'm going to take a little bit of that
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orange. Not too much of the orange. I want more of it to be yellow than orange. I'm just going to
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mix those together and then I'm going to take a little white and mix that in. So you're going to
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get like a like a lighter yellow with a tinge of orange in it. This is gonna act
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like a highlight. We're gonna go to our pumpkin and we're gonna start on the top middle part and then we're going to take our brush and I'm literally gonna make
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like a the letter C. And I'm just gonna do that a couple times because I just
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want to show you know the different textures of the pumpkin and I don't I don't want to cover the entire canvas with this color, just on certain points
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I'm making the letter C and I kind of expand it out to the sides of the canvas
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And then I repeat the same on the other end But I don cover all of it all of it All the canvas just like kind of in stripes Use the broad side of my brush to do this
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And I kind of leave this part the same color as the background, which is that nice orange
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So what we just did here, we just added a little bit more of an intrigue
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There's more depth to this pumpkin. Go in with a little bit more white this time
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Using that same color. I didn't even, I didn't even rinse my brush to be honest. And I'm just going to repeat that again
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but this time I'm just I'm just gonna use the tip of my brush only just so I can again add a bit more
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color to the scene and that's pretty much that for the most part so what we're gonna do is just
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gonna wipe the excess paint I'm gonna clean off with water I'm gonna put that down now that we
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have the general background done we're ready to move on to the next step it's creating the facial
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features of our pumpkin as well as adding in the leaves the facial features are totally up to you
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It depends on your style. Depends on what kind of face you like. The faces I like to make are the
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ones that are laughing faces. I don't know if that just speaks to my personality or whatever, but I
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just love the happy looking pumpkins. They just make me giggle. They make me smile every time I
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see them. So really, if you like a particular pumpkin face, go ahead and use that one for this
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but I'm going to do a smiling one. So I'm going to go and switch over to my detail round brush
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This one's a number one, but if you have a number zero, that's cool too. And I'm just going to dip
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it in water and then grab some black. And now I'm going to, I'm going to try to center the features
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of my pumpkin on this. So I'm going to start about here. Okay. I'm going to mark that side right there
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So we're going to start with the eyes. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do kind of a line going up like this and curve it just like that. Okay. And then we're going to do
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repeat the line coming down this way. So it kind of like makes a peak on the
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bottom on the top here then it goes back down and then we're gonna repeat that on
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the inside. So it's like an upside down U. So you're just making this shape
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right here and then we're gonna repeat again over here. Now I kind of want to
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give my pumpkin it's kind of looking sideways instead of straight at me so
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I'm just gonna make the same shape here but I'm gonna make it a little smaller. Start right here, bring it up. Not as high as the first one, but if you want to make it look
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like your pumpkin staring right out at you, you can make these the same size. And then I'm going
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to make the second loop. This time I'm going to drop the tail of that loop just a little bit lower
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than the first tail. And then I'm going to connect them with the upside down you, just like so. So you
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see how it kind of looks like he's looking from the side and staring at me. So now we got the eyes
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that's all done. Now I love that nice wide pumpkin grin. It's kind of like Tim Burton
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grins of the pumpkins. I just, I think they're creepy and I love it. So I'm going to start
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like way up here. And I'm just going to make a, make a, like a U shape, but I'm going to try to
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start up as high as I can and then bring it down to like right around here and then bring it up
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like that. And now that I've done that U shape, I'm going to go in now. I'm going to plan out the
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top of part of the mouth, which has the little tooth of the pumpkin. So I'm going to probably
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give myself about an inch, come up here, make a line coming down this way, another line
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and another line going up. And then I'm just going to take that end, connect it to this part of the
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mouth. Then I'm going to take this end, and then I'm going to connect it to this part of the mouth
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Oh, he is happy as heck, and I love it. And then I want to give him some, like, eyebrow features
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So I kind of want to, like, do this part with him, just make it look like he's, like, raising his
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eyebrows, and he's just, like, really enjoying, really having a hoot and holler about whatever
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whatever joke. Maybe some goblin told him a joke, and he's just like, ho, ho, ho, ho. And then I'm
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gonna do a little chin for him just like that. Oh my gosh, he is adorable! Now that we've done that
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we're gonna go ahead, fill in the eyes and the mouth. And you can stick with your detail brush
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for this if you want to be a little bit more more careful and in control. But if you feel like you
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want to get a bigger brush to fill this in, go for it. This is your time, baby. You can do whatever
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you'd like with whatever brush you have. I love, I love Halloween
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I went ahead and I rinsed my Detail Round Brush because now we're gonna go ahead and add some leaves
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Fill that in a little bit. And I'm just gonna grab some of that yellow
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and mix it in with the green here. Because now what I gonna do is I gonna go to let go in this corner here And I gonna go ahead and start to make a leaf shape at this corner i going to start with my brush i going to go up like this kind of uh like a little curve
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then it's going to go down just like that then we're going to do another leaf leaf uh or another
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line kind of curving up like that down another line curving out like so then it's going to go
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back in. So that's the first half of the leaf. We're just going to continue it. This time we're
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going to make those lines smaller so it can kind of retract back, just like so. So basically you're
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just repeating it such that it comes out and then comes back in. You just got to fill that in
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If you want to make the edges of those leaves a little rougher, like not as not as pokey
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you can just kind of fan it out, fan out the edges with your brush. I'm going to do another
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little set here. Again, curved line, bring it in, curved line, bring it in, curved line, bring it in
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and then another curved line. And feel free to experiment with the directions that you're doing
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your curved lines. Like, so far I've had them kind of biasing a little to the right
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but you can always change that within the leaves. You know, practice on your palette
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practice on another piece of paper just to kind of get a feel for it. You don't have to like do it
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right on your canvas and guess. So I'm going to do one up here as well. Yeah, I think I'm going to
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do three in total. Okay, go in, down. So there we go. And it's going to slightly cover the eyebrow
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but that's cool because we already established that, that eyebrow. I'm not worried about it
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So I'm just gonna go ahead, fill that in. I just can't, he's too cute. Okay, I think I'm good on that
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So, give my brush a little rinse and then we're gonna go back in now with the black because we're
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we're gonna now outline those leaves. Now you can either wait for your paint to dry off
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a little bit, but just because I kinda like working while it's still a little wet, I don't want it to be so perfect
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I'm just gonna go to the edges of the leaves here. It doesn't have to be perfect
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And I'm just gonna make like a very quick, quick brush outline
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And I'm just doing that so that I don't have to, you know, I don't want it to be too precise
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this is kind of like a rustic looking pumpkin scene, like a pumpkin painting, so honestly
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I'm not too concerned about it looking super perfect. But I'm gonna start making the spine
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within the leaf. Oh my goodness, I forget, like my leaf anatomy is so off. I don't remember what
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some of these are called, but like the spine, is it the spine of the leaf? Like that middle part
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there and then whatever veins coming out. I'm like referring to the human anatomy on a pumpkin, but
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if anybody can comment what the actual terminology is, that would be great. So we did, we did like a
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nice little quick outline. Doesn't have to be perfect. If you want it to be a little bit more
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cleaner, you know, just take your time with your, with your bristle as you're doing this. But of
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course, I'm not too concerned about it being super perfect. I kind of like how rough it is
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So now that we have that part, we're going to start to add more of the little details here and there on our pumpkin
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I'm just going to grab that black once more, and I'm going to start making..
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It's basically like the rind of the pumpkin, but the way it's represented is more kind of like dots or just like lines, just like disconnected lines
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So just to give you an example of what I'm talking about here, I'm going to start on the top here
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and bring it down and then it's going to continue this way like that and then another one over here
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so it's representing the ridges of that pumpkin but just like in a very like kind of like it's
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stitched and i thought that was like a kind of a cool feature i'm kind of leaving the this part
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here free of all those dots but of course you know if you want to add it in go for it this is
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totally this is totally something that's up to you that you would like to do. I think I'm gonna
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leave it at that for now. I think that's good enough. And then we're going to do some of like
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those spindleys like those those corkscrews those corkscrew spindleys that come out from the pumpkin
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So I'm gonna do one over here like I'm just gonna pick a top part and then just go like this
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Basically just like twirl my brush. Kind of like that that so cute One two three Oh that adorable I love it love it love it And I probably gonna do another one like that You know you can vary the way that the corkscrew happens so you can have it going in one direction
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having it going in another direction. Oh my gosh. We're getting very close. We're getting very close
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to the end here you guys. This is awesome. I'm gonna go clean our brush. I'm gonna grab my white paint
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with my detail brush. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna add some highlights
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some highlighted features just to really make this pop. Go to my leaf here, just add a few
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white lines just kind of on the ridges just to have it kind of stand out a little bit
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And then I'm gonna do one over here because I'm trying to think of like where the the light would
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hit. Like the under eye flaps, they kind of go up. They would show that there's some depth there
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And then I'm going to do some right around the tooth. You guys, this is so cute
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I can't, I can't. And yeah, so I'm just trying to, I'm going to imitate some of those
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those white dotted lines on the sides here. Again, it adds a little bit of, you know, something for your eye to look at
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Does it make it just like one thing that's going on in your picture
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There's like a lot of little details and I think that's a really cool thing. Okay, maybe I'll just do another little corkscrew with some white, because why not
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You guys. Like I'm losing my mind here because of how cute this pumpkin is
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I want to probably maybe add a bit more up to the leaves, so I'm just going to take my brush
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I'm just gonna get that yellow. I'm just going to go to the
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middle part portions here just kind of add a little bit of little bit of
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of that yellow again. I don't want it to be this one this one universal color
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I want to add a little bit a little bit more to the scene and that just creates more to it
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Vuh, vuh, voom. So now the general painting stuff is all done. It's time to add the accoutrement
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So set your pumpkin aside to dry and in the meanwhile grab your three popsicle sticks
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And in case you don't actually have popsicle sticks you can go ahead and use cardboard or like toilet paper roll
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You just want to make sure that you have about an inch wide to about four inches tall is basically the size you want to go with
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I'm using the hot glue gun to stick the popsicle sticks together on the sides and to just reinforce it to make sure that it doesn't break apart on me
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I added another bead of hot glue onto the back side of the sticks so that they stay in place
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And then what I'm going to do is just grab a little bit of my green paint and a little bit of my orange paint
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and mix those together to make a really nice brown color. And using my flat wash brush, I'm just going to paint on top of my popsicle sticks on the side that's going to show
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I'm making sure also to paint the sides and the top portions of the sticks so that you can get a nice three-dimensional coverage
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I'm going to take those sticks, hot glue it to the back of our canvas, just so it looks like a nice cute little pumpkin stem
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And then to add a little bit more cuteness to all this, I'm going to grab a bit of my twine, or you can use curling ribbon
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I'm going to measure out about like five to six inches of twine and cut those out
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And those are going to act like the hair parts of the pumpkin
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You know, like the parts that kind of like sprout out towards the sides of the stem
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and it's just going to add a really cool cute rustic feel to your pumpkin. I'm going to take
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my hot glue gun. I try to like collect all that twine where that stem of the pumpkin is just so
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it looks like it's emanating from the stem itself. So I'm just going to make sure I clean out any wax
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that I have remaining. Add a couple more here and there as I see fit and even just do a little bit
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of t here and there with some scissors and before you know it I am all finished. And that my
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Queen Bees is our cute jack-o'-lantern painting. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and getting your
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spook on with me. Now I know that Halloween is going to look a little different this year for
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all of us but whatever you choose to do please be safe, be considerate and kind to others
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wear a mask, and most importantly don't be afraid to be silly and have fun with your art. I love you
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have a happy Halloween, and I'll see you all next time. Bye
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