Watercolor Fundamentals: Painting Pumpkins

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Charlotte DeMolay, an artist and instructor. Welcome to watercolor fundamentals, painting pumpkins. I have lived in the South almost my entire life. And I'm actually used to faking fall. Fall means pumpkins. Lots and lots of pumpkins. I put it in my coffee, I bake with it. I even paint them and put them in various ways. Besides some of my sea pictures, pumpkins are probably the one thing I've painted the most. I've painted them in pastel and acrylic and plenty of times in watercolor. I'm going to show you a loose, easy style to paint watercolor pumpkins, and not just orange, we'll do it in several colors, will also show you some ways where you can give it a little twist, make it your own. We'll cover painting. A basic orange pumpkin. Multicolor pumpkins. Pumpkins with leaves, a very loose pumpkin with splatter. And for a little bonus, a modern watercolor pumpkin. This is an easy technique. If you're a beginner, don't worry. I'll step you through it. And at the end you'll have your own little bit of fall. So let's get in the fall season. Join me for watercolor fundamentals, painting pumpkins. 2. Painting the Basic Pumpkin: We're going to start with a basic orange pumpkin. First, we'll get started with the drawing. I'm lightly drawing an oval. I'll darken up my pencil. I just wanted you to see how normally I very lightly draw and then erase. I'm going to darken this up so you can see what I'm doing. So you start with a basic oval shape. I put in a diamond at the top for this stem. Then draw almost a football shape in the middle. And then curving lines to match each side. It then I round out the bottoms by adding a curving line between those other lines and the stem at the top. It's almost kind of a triangular pyramid shape and then tapers off. Because I drew so dark. So you can see it for the demonstration. These lines will probably still show through my painting. That doesn't bother me a lot. I suggest drawing as lightly as you can and then rubbed with your eraser to get the lines as light as possible. Next, let's start adding the color, the colors I'll be using, are cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, and burnt umber for this pumpkin, we're going to imagine a light source coming in from the top right corner of the paper. We'll start with a plain orange and add it in at the bottom half of each curve. Again, this is the darker part of the orange. Essentially I have the base color which is orange, the yellow which is going to be my highlight color. And then the shadows are going to be created on the burnt umber and ultramarine blue. For parts of this demonstration, I'm going to speed up the painting process. The whole painting took me about nine minutes, but it can be boring to watch that stroke by stroke. Don't think I'm a speed painter. I do just speed this up to help you get to the explanation part and try it yourself. If you're painting along with me, just pause it as you do each step. So it goes through and add as we're adding our base orange down. As you can see, my strokes are fairly loose. If you'd like a smoother look you can go, a little bit slower, blend and your lines. And I'm going to add the yellow for the highlight, and I'm taking it right on top. This is kind of a layering technique as I'm painting, the orange is drying, so it's adding layers in for me and I'm seeing the strokes which I like that adds a lot of texture to my pumpkin. After adding my highlight, I'm looking kind of overall and seeing where some areas I wanted it a little bit darker with the base orange. Because watercolors are water-soluble. If I've got an edge that's a little too harsh, I just take some water and rub it down. Like in this top left side. Got some blooms over here on this right side. That's okay. And smooth them out or leave them. Okay, let's mix up some shadow. This first dark layer I'm using just burnt umber, the burnt umber, is close in value and color to the cadmium orange. And remember the lights coming down from that top right corner of the paper. So I'll add it to the left side and to the bottom. Little too much, add a little bit more orange in there. Add a little bit of base, smooth it up. My strokes are looser. I like that kind of texture. Each section of the pumpkin is curved. I'm adding a shadow in the crevice. Now want to go in with the even deeper shadow. So now I've added some ultramarine blue to my burnt umber. Then going into darken up those shadows. And especially darker on the bottom. After adding shadows, I see some areas where I'd like it to be a little bit brighter, orange or maybe a little more yellow. Feel like this pumpkins a little washed out as add just a little bit more color in there, help it pop a little more. Okay, Let's do the stem. For the stem, I'm using that same burnt umber and ultramarine blue mixture. And I'm just kind of outlining it and then filling it in because I'm impatient and don't let my lines dry, I lose them a little bit, but if you can wait a minute, let those outlines dry and then just take a lightly wet brush and fill it in. It's sort of adds your shadows for you. So instead I'm going to dip back in and add a little bit of that ultramarine blue on the left side to darken it up. And this is what it looks like dry. Let's try this again with some different colors. 3. Painting Other Colors: I'm going to start by drawing three pumpkins. I'm going to start with a kind of one of the short fat pumpkins, like the little mini pumpkins you get their ridges are a lot more pronounced and then put in a tall, skinny pumpkin. And the more normal round size pumpkin. Again, I'm drawing much darker than I normally would so that you can see the drawings. And then let's erase the lines so they don't show through as strongly. So confession. When I started this demonstration, I was going to do an indigo pumpkin. And indigo is a combination of Payne's gray and a phthalo blue. I accidentally grabbed ultramarine blue when I was mixing it up. So it's not quite indigo, and I'll do another indigo pumpkin later in this class so you can see an actual indigo pumpkin. It doesn't look much different, but there is a little bit. So for this pumpkin, it is ultramarine blue and Payne's gray. That is my base color. Again, I imagined my light coming down from the upper right-hand side. So I'm adding the base color of this blue for this blue pumpkin down around the bottom and then up the ridges. Put on the color and then just take a clean brush and use the paint already on the paper to pull it up. As you know, if you've taken classes with me, I prefer a very loose watercolor style. So letting those strokes, stay in there is on purpose for me, if you like it a little bit smoother, you can work segment by segment, doing this same technique of laying the base color and then use a clean brush to bring it. The watercolor doesn't have a chance to dry and you can make a smoother painting. I'm letting the white of the paper be the highlight for this pumpkin. For the shadow, I'm using my ultramarine blue and burnt umber mixture again. And I'm darkening these ridges up and adding some shadow at the base of this pumpkin. After I pulled up some of the colors it's not quite as dark as I'd like. So I'm going to add in a little bit more. For the stem, I'm again using burnt umber and painting the basic outline of the stem. And then add a little bit of the shadow with the burnt umber, ultramarine blue mixture. Okay, I'm going to work on the other side over here and let that pumpkin dry before I do the one in the middle, this time I'm going to do turqoise. I live at the beach, so there's a lot of turquoise and teal in my house. I'm doing the same basic concept that teal is the main color. I'm going to let the white of the paper be the highlight. And then I'll go back and add some shadow with the ultramarine blue and burnt umber. Again, remember the light's coming in from the upper right-hand side of the paper. If you add in the base color and then you go back with plain water, and realize and it's not pulling out, it's already dry. You can just again: watercolors are water-soluble, even on your paper. Just keep add water to it or a little bit more paint to pull it up. Right now let's add some of the shadow. Again, ultramarine blue, burnt umber, and I'm darkening the ridges and the base of the pumpkin. If you find after you do this, you don't have quite enough blue. Just add some more. I had my highlights down a little too far. I'm just adding some more blue in around the pumpkin. And sometimes you go back and forth like this. You add your base and your shadows and realize the main color isn't coming through as strongly. So add some more of that. If it looks a little washed out, you've got a little too many highlights, bring your color up a little bit taller. And then add a stem. My stem is again using the burnt umber. If you want to add a little green to these stems, I'm still use that base of the burnt umber and then you can mix in a little sap green and have a dark side and then the lighter side. For our center pumpkin, I'm gonna do essentially a white pumpkin, which of course you don't do with base white. I find most of the white pumpkins have a yellow tinge to them. So I'm using yellow ochre as my base, but I'll be using it very sparingly. So I'm using a tiny brush, just doing some of the outlines and then a little at the bottom. And then I will blend it in, but not all the way over. Since you're trying to do a white pumpkin, the white of the paper is going to be the bulk of this pumpkin. And yellow ochre kind of adds to the shadow, but then I will go back with a little bit of my shadow color as well. Again, use a very tiny brush to keep control of this. Just put light amounts down and then use a clean brush and water to pull them around for the shadows. And finish it out with the stem. Since these stems have dried now I can go back in and add a little bit darker shadow on the left side of this. Okay, if you don't want your pumpkins floating out in the space, you need to add some sort of base to them or ground. So I am doing mine like it's a light shadow. I'm using some of the burnt umber and ultramarine blue and spread it around again keeping the darker on the bases and on the left side. And then I decided, I'd drop just a little bit of sap green and just to kind of give it that indication of maybe it's sitting on an on grass or pumpkin patch or something. And then go back in with just a little bit darker of the shadow at the bases and bridging any white gaps or whitespaces. Kind of give it a firmer grounded look like it's not floating in space but sitting on something. Now this is what it looks like after it's dry. Let's go do a few more pumpkins so I can show you how to add some leaves. 4. More Pumpkins and Adding Leaves: All right, We're gonna do this again so I can show you painting pumpkin leaves. This time I'm going to do an orange pumpkin and an actual indigo pumpkin. I've already done the drawing. Let's do some leaves real quick. Now this is a little bit stylized since our watercolors are kinda loose, I'm going to have kind of a vine coming off here. And easiest way I've found to draw the leaves, because if you look up pumpkin leaves, images of it, you'll find that there is a variety in them. But the one thing they do have in common, wide base that tapers down to a point and it varies and the width on how it gets down there. So I found the easiest way to draw sort of a stylized pumpkin leaf. Draw center line in the direction that I'd like the leaf to be going. And then I'll draw essentially a fat heart that starts at the top and sort of follows that curve around. And then you can leave it like that. I'll do a couple of more like this. Or you can put in some of the sort of trademark points that indicate a leaf or a pumpkin leaf. And you just follow the curve of the pumpkin come down in that. I messed up a little there, I'll erase it and then you can kind of erase that inner curve and use these outside points as your guide when it comes to painting them. Again, that fat part. Follow it for your point shapes. Let's erase all of this. Let's get started with the pumpkin that's back behind. I'm going to do that the indigo now, true confession. I have done this composition a couple of times, and each time I just was making an absolute mess with watercolors. Let's get a little frustrated because I can kinda paint pumpkins in my sleep That's probably the thing I've painted the most of my life, besides sea dunes. So I couldn't figure it out and I finally realized I was just getting the paper way too wet. So I'm going to go a little slower, in fact, I'm going to go on and switch over to a slightly smaller brush because I know I've got a heavy hand with the water today and I'm going to start this first pumpkin with just phthalo blue. It's going to be my indigo color. Again, our light is coming in from the upper right corner, and this might seem even a little too light. But again, for some reason, I am heavy handed with the water today. And when this happens, you can use a hairdryer, slow yourself down between layers of paint and let it dry. You can blot the paper with paper towel to help dry. You can move to a smaller brush, which is what I'm doing so that I'm a little bit more careful on how much water I'm putting down on the paper. I might be a little bit of overkill here on the small brush. But again, this is, I think my third attempt at this, which shows you even when you're comfortable doing this, you can still have off days. And the thing to do when you're having a day like that, either stop and wait for on day. I don't quite have that luxury of time right now. So I thought about what I was doing wrong, kinda step back and took a look, realized and each and every case, the pumpkin was way too wet. So for me the way to control that was again, grab a smaller brush. Phthalo blue as my base color, putting it where my shadows would be...the darkest part of my pumpkin. I'll use some water to bring it up, sparingly this time. Now again, I want to remind you on this painting and all my paintings, my talking seems normal. But the painting is actually sped up. It's faster than I normally paint. It's a little because it can be a little boring to watch it stroke by stroke. Now this tiny brush is kind of killing me. on bringing some of the water up so I'm going to go on and switch to a slightly larger brush. Hope that I have lightened up a little bit. Definitely the previous layers have dried a bit, so I was working with a smaller brush and taking longer. That's okay. I'm basically just gonna kind of rubbed those edges out, pull up what I can, and then I can go back and add a little more paint if I need to. This time each time I'm grabbing water with my brush, I'm touching it to my paper towel over here so that it's just a little bit less water. So this is little dark compared to this. So I'm gonna again cautiously, ha, that's kind of strange for me to say, I'm not really a cautious painter. But carefully grab some more paint and bring up the blue of this pumpkin a bit. I'm have a little spot right here that I feel like maybe I added a little too much. I can use a paper towel. Also Q-tip will help you be a little bit more precise with that too. Okay, let's add a little shadow to this. So I'm mixed up just a little bit of Payne's gray with the indigo blue. I'm going to again use my tiny brush and just add a little bit darker. Now if you prefer this darker blue, make that your base color. If you want that really, really deep, kind of almost denim indigo look. Again, those two colors are Payne's gray and phthalo blue. And you can see I'm not putting a lot in, just enough, not putting in a lot, I'm just putting in enough kind of bring out the intensity of the dark there. And especially in places like this where the blue has just blended in, this helps bring back the ridges of our pumpkin. And then just barely wet brush to rub it out to where it's not sharp edge there. And I think I'm going to let that blue stand like that pumpkin stand like that. They become, oops. See telling you, me in the water today. Just draw that right up. I lost my line there. I'm just going to touch it a little bit since the paper's wet for me putting there. As you can see, it absorbs it so I just touch it down a little bit and it pulls it back up. Okay. Kind of judge, your painting. See how dry it is. You want it fairly dry because when you start adding orange over here, if this paper is wet, it's going to bleed in. You may have noticed that on our other painting where it was multiple pumpkins. So if it isn;t dry, get a hairdryer, step away, whatever you need to do. But I'll go ahead and start working on this pumpkin. Since I'm using a smaller brush and the unsped up time, it's taken me a little bit longer than normal to paint. So I feel like once I get over there, this will be dry enough that it won't interfere. I'm going to do the same thing. This is going to be orange. So I use my base cadmium orange for the base of the pumpkin and little bit more pigment in that. Oops, drops happen. And I'll just go ahead and work and bring some of these up, givomg this over here, a longer time to dry as well, Start to adding a little bit of yellow in for my highlight. Again, you don't have to. If you just want to make it orange, you can let the white of the paper be your highlight, like the intensity of adding in the yellow the same way. Conversely, I like the intensity of adding in cadmium red here, this is a red, not the orange. I'm dropping here at the bottom. I think it brings up the intensity of the orange. And if you don't have cadmium orange, you just use the red and the yellow, same way. You would just bring your yellow down into it to deepen up your orange. Okay. I think I carefully covered the whitespace here without it getting too wet again. All right, I'm going to move in to these two pumpkins segments. Highlight yellow in there. Join the two with water. Lost a little bit there. Wait for that to dry a little bit and bring it back. Going to be careful as I encounter here, you can also leave just a hint of whitespace there. You don't have to go all the way to the edge. That's the joy of watercolor little bits of white space are okay, They just kind of fit right in. In acrylic, that might be odd, watercolor, not so much because you end up with a lot of white spaces, when you have a loose watercolor, you end up with a lot of whitespace anyway. Okay, let's find our edge here again and here as well. Shadow for the orange pumpkin, you can start with just a little bit of burnt umber to begin with, if you'd like. Just because that burnt umber adds a little character to the orange. I feel like, I feel like there's a bit more you can do with the orange pumpkins because it is a mixed color. The red and yellow make orange so you can use the red and get some highlights. Add more color reflections. The burnt umber...you can add some depth to it. With some of the other combinations with the white pumpkins or with the blue. With white pumpkins we're using a base of yellow so you're not having the mixed color. It doesn't give you that variety to add in there and add interest and depth. Now I'm going to add ultramarine blue into that. Not going to use a lot because this is already pretty wet. I've gotten a bit gunshot today about getting things too wet, so I'm not gonna go heavy with the shadow on this pumpkin. Little bit more orange over here. With the brown, I suddenly decided I wanted more orange all over. Whoops, that's a lot of orange. When that happens clean off your brush gets water and dilute it. I think we've spent about twice as long on this pumpkin than we did the blue one, but that's what happens when we get more colors and more variety in there. Okay, I'm going to stop almost going to stop, going to stop before it gets too crazy over here. Let's do some stems and leaves. Okay, my stems are a mixture of sap green and burnt umber, keeping that tiny brush essentially outlining the stem. And let that one dry well and go over here and do this one. I'll let that dry for a minute and go on to the vines. The vines are also going to be the burnt umber and the sap green adding a little bit more of the sap green in there. So it's basically makes it dark green. Vines are just a little twist of the brush. Okay, for the leaves. So going to keep that sap green burnt umber. And basically remember how the light source is coming in. So I'm outlining that drawing. And then with a clean brush and do the same sort of concept we did with the pumpkin where you have your base color and then you use a clean brush to bring it out so that way you're not getting it too dark. So now why you've got this leaf wet, you're going to drop in some more colors, drop in some pure sap green, bring out the green of the leaf and try and keep it away from your outline because that leaves that line in there. And then up here where the light's coming in, can add a little bit of the cadmium yellow, or you can add a little bit of yellow ochre. Ok, I'm going to fill this in a little bit. Bu painting the outline and letting it dry it gives some of those twists that you get. in the stem, you can always paint it solid and go in and fill that out later. So this is kind of wet so we'll work on the other leaves and then come back to that and add a little shadow to it. So I'll add another vine here. Little brush is good for that. And do the same thing of outlining this leaf. Now you're just outline you where you drew the points. You don't redraw that heart. Now you can probably see it from where you've erased it. You'll painting right over that line. You don't need to paint the heart shape. Go ahead do these as well. Let that dry. And this side here is darker. Start adding in your sap green, get the green of the leaf going. Since this is bigger I want it to be a lot darker. Then the light side, get some of the yellow ocher in there. Being wet on wet, it just pulls helps pull that highlight in if it doesn't seem light enough. Again, add some cadmium yellow. I don't think I got the inside of this leaf dark enough and that's okay. Add all one color and I'll show you how we can fix that. Add the highlight and I'm more of the green. This looks more like a brown leaf. Now I want the shadow on this side and I still have a lot on there, so that's a little better. Make sure it's fairly dry. And add leaf stems. Come up with a little bit of a shadow on the bottom there. The leaves are fun because like I said, they're not, I don't make them super realistic, they're more stylized. True pumpkin leaves are huge. And in a pumpkin patch they're covering up half the pumpkin. And that's not what we want. So we do these kinda cute little stylized leaves just to give you that indication. That these are fresh off the pumpkin patch. Okay, our pumpkins are floating. Let's add a little base down here. I'm gonna pretend these are still in the pumpkin patch. We're mixing up burnt umber and sap green, and given it that indication of leafy green pumpkin patch down under here, notice that don't go all the way up, leaving a little white. That's just because I don't want to blur or blend the bottom of the pumpkin . So pick a place and make it about even. So you've got kind of an even ground layer and doesn't look tilted. You can light it up as it gets closer to you. Make a little more interesting, just drop in some straight sap green and now mix up ultramarine blue, burnt umber. We're going to give it a little bit of shadow under here. Nope, too brown, go back in, add a little bit more blue. And because the light's coming in over here, it casts a shadow here. We're not going to do an exact pumpkin shadow, just the indications definitely darker on this side. Now shadows have reflections in them so I'll just drop a hint of orange. All I'm doing is just put a touch on my brush and touch. I'm gonna do the same, that phthalo blue. And because it's a wet on wet, it's just going to absorb it, do a little bit of bloom and that's it. And this is what it looks like dry. 5. Adding Splatter: So you know, I like a little bit looser of a watercolor look. So let's do another pumpkin that's really loose and add in another technique that I've talked about in watercolor fundamentals, which is splatter. So I'm gonna draw the basic pumpkin. Erase my small lines. I'm going to do this in the traditional orange, again, using cadmium orange. If you don't have cadmium orange, you can mix it using cadmium red and cadmium yellow. I just got the orange because I love pumpkins. I love painting pumpkins. So it's a bit of a lazy splurge for me. Add in your base, just like with the other pumpkins. Add in your yellow as a highlight on top. Now for this pumpkin, I'm adding my lines a little bit bigger, a little bit chunkier, not blending them very much. I want it to look like a watercolor, not like photo realistic painting. I want some character in it. This also means I'm leaving a little bit of white space around some of the ridges. That's okay. Again, I'm going for a loose with this. After I get my base and my yellow, I'm just blending some of the lines in together, which is more of a meeting of the colors, less about getting things smooth. And even when you're not leaving the white of the paper as a highlight, just lighter parts of the paint can be highlights like where the yellow is a bit thinner and less intense, adds a highlight. I'm also dropping some red in here just to sort of pop that orange look a little bit since the red is going in as a layer on top of the orange, it shows the orange underneath so it doesn't come out as a straight red, it adds to the intensity of the orange. Ok it's shadow time. We're going to use a thinner brush for the shadows, outline my ridges, and just add a little bit in. I kind of let that red and dark orange be the strength of the shadow on this pumpkin. The other thing the shadow color can do is if your pencil lines don't erase completely. I noticed that on several of these pumpkins, since I was drawing darker, so it can be seen on the video. So I would bring that ultramarine blue burnt umber combination all the way up to outline my ridges and to cover that pencil line. Ok after I get the lines in place, clean off my brush, and just use clean water to blend it in a little bit smoother again since this is such a loose painting, I don't want it extremely smooth. I'm leaving a lot of the brush strokes in there and not smoothing them out, like I talked about with the other paintings. If you find your colors aren't as intense after you have your shadow and highlights, feel free to add more. I know my palette is a little unusual for this painting. This was from something I bought at the grocery store. I don't know, but whatever food was on it after I used it, I felt, well what neat little, little pans and stuff for watercolor. Only drawback was that it's clear, but I just keep it on top of a white sheet of paper and it makes it perfect little tiny palette. I really want the colors of this pumpkin to have some intensity. So that's why I keep adding more on top and many times inn watercolor, that's how you pop up the intensity is add layers on top of layers to get the colors brighter. Alright, time to mix up some color for the stem. This time I'm using sap green in my burnt umber mixture. It comes across as a dark green on the stem. Outline the planes of the stem, and then fill it in with some of the color, lighter on the light side, dropping in a little bit if that sap green to keep that stem a good green look. Adding in a little bit more of just burnt umber. So on the shadow side, I'm mixing in a little bit more of the burnt umber and ultramarine to kind of overpower the sap that I had added. So it adds in a darker shadow on this left side of the stem. Okay, now I have the pumpkin like I want it. I'm going to mix up some very wet pools of the orange and the yellow and the red. This is going to be for the splatter. You want it to be very wet with your pigment. I like to use a stencil brush for splatters I think it splatters more evenly and, unfortunately, you can't see from this view, but I'm basically just rubbing across the bottom of this stencil brush after dipping into the color. And it's adding splatter dots. And I'm doing it all along the base of the pumpkin, not going up on the side too much. The other way to add splatter is just to put it on your brush and tap your brush. I think this adds darker splatters. Going on with the sap green for some of this as well. And splatters are definitely not realistic. It adds a level of energy and looseness to it. I'm going to add a little base here, so it's not just floating in the air. I'm using some of my ultramarine blue and burnt umber. I know I'm painting right on top the splatters. I think that adds a little bit the depth to that some of the splatters are underneath and they also, since it's the colors of the pumpkin, it blends in and a lot of times shadows have a little bit of reflection of the object that's casting a shadow. I'm going to drop in a little bit more orange to highlight that reflection. Now you have a loose fun pumpkin using some of the wet on wet, layering and splatter, which is one of my favorites. And here's what it looks like dry. 6. A Modern Twist: Now I'm going to show you an entirely different technique. We're going to do a more modern pumpkin. Going to start this with a pencil drawing. I'm going to do kind of a tall skinny pumpkin for this, again, it's a little darker so you can see it. And then I'll go back and erase my lines. Okay, as I'm painting this, I'm going to go a lot more carefully within my outlines, but as I'm going on the inside of the ridge, I'm actually going to leave a little bit of a white gap between each ridge of the pumpkin. And as you can see, I'm filling in, instead of doing the brush strokes and shadow and highlight, I'm filling in the entire ridge of the pumpkin with a very wet base, orange. Now I'm going to go in and drop some color in using red. I'm just adding it into that very wet. This is a very wet on wet technique. So I'm adding some red into the wetness of that orange and I'm going to add some yellow to the top. I'm still using the idea that the light is coming in from the upper right-hand side and for the shadow, instead of adding this as a painting stroke, I'm taking that umber, ultramarine blue combination and then just dropping it in on the bottom and then bringing up little bit into the wetness of the paint. Like said, this is a very definitely a wet on wet technique. Not going to show the layers and the brushstrokes like in the previous demonstrations. Now you can really see what I'm talking about with leaving that white line in between each of the ridges and that's going to stay, that's a part of this kind of look for this pumpkin. If you feel like you can't paint quite that steady, which I've been practicing this because my first couple of attempts were not that steady, instead of just painting and leaving the whitespace, you can use frisk it or masking fluid to leave the white of the paper where you want. After painting the whole thing with a very wet base orange, I'm dropping in red, dropping in a little orange as well. And then I'll drop in a little yellow on top. And the same for the shadow at the bottom. Just dropping in, going a little bit more of a bluer look with this shadow here. Okay, for the next ridge. And also unlike the other pumpkins where I worked all over the pumpkin at once, I'm doing these each ridge by ridge because I don't want the paint to dry in the middle of my process. I want it to stay very wet, so I'm also mixing up a good size pool of paint to work with each time so that I don't have to stop and mix some more and risk what I've already put down drying. Now fill in the entire ridge. The only white I'm leaving are the lines in between each ridge. And being a bit more careful about that. than in the other demos. Even though I guide the paint along a little bit, I'm also letting it mix on its own. And as it starts to dry, you see by the paint interacting on its own without me directing every bit of it, it adds some very interesting texture and blooms on the pumpkin. So on this ridge, I did not add the shadow in there. I'm keeping it on the left side. Got the paint is a little thick up here. So I just added some plain water on top of the paint. I'm going to use this same technique for the stem. I will paint it leaving some edge between it and the orange using a very tiny brush so that I can keep that separation in there and fill in the whole stem. Add a little too much of the paint. So I essentially cleaned my brush, dried it off and wicked it up. And now I can drop in the colors that I want on top of this because it's still wet. Even though I took some of the wet paint up, it's still plenty wet to add in some of the sap green and some of the burnt umber. And I'm letting the colors blend a bit on their own. I'm guiding them, but it's so wet, it's going to allow it some blending just from the mixing on the paper. And there you have a modern watercolor pumpkin. And now you can see in the dry version, the blooms I'm talking about. It's where the water and the paint mix together on on the paper with minimal interference from your brush and it creates some interesting texture and lines and ridges. I think blooms add an element to the painting that's very hard to replicate with your paintbrush. And that's watercolor pumpkins. Now let's talk about your project. 7. Project Time: I hope you enjoyed this class with me. For your project, If you've been painting along with me, you're probably done. Just take a picture or scan it and upload it to the project section here. If you haven't been painting along, get out the watercolors, pick your favorite style and paint one or paint several and please share it. I love seeing the work that you do and I try and comment on each and every one of the projects that are in my classes. If you liked this class, please head over to my profile, follow me, and check out my other classes here on Skillshare. Thank you.