Day 91 - Double page pumpkins

Here it is amid the pumpkins and the painting clutter.

I seem to be addicted to pumpkins lately...this is the fourth or fifth painting I have done of them.  And I should add I bought them all!! I have four huge pumpkins and a variety of smaller ones as well as squash.  We are going to be eating ALOT of pumpkin bread and pumpkin pies in the future. Lucky for us WE LOVE pumpkin pie, and pumpkin bread is not bad either!!

Here it is before I painted it.  Its drawn with my kuratake pens that I got at Binders.  Looking at it...I should have put one of the word blocks either vertical OR down on the bottom to break up the three in a row.  Neater printing might have been good too BUT I was in a hurry as usual.

Mind you I did research too to find out exactly what each of these pumpkins and squash were called. Not easy searching on a pumpkin called Ghiradelli...all you get is chocolate...so if you decide you want to read more about pumpkins just search on pumpkin varieties.  Here's one of the pages I used http://www.hauntedbay.com/thelab/pumpkin/pumpkinvarieties.shtml

All but one of these pumpkins are heirloom so I can save the seeds and grow some next year.  Two are French - the Cinderella and the Fairytale. One is Australian- The Jarrahdale or Ghirardelli.  The Pink Porcelain Doll is a hybrid BUT when you buy one this year part of the money goes to breast cancer research.

FINALLY I heard you say that!! Here it is up close and personal!! 

About the watercolor.  I only used transparent yellows and reds to paint this.  Hansa Yellow and Aurelian as well as Quinacridone Magenta to make orange.  I coated the orange word blocks with Nickel Azo Gold to brighten it even more.  

The green Cucurbita block also got a coat of the Nickel Azo Gold as did parts of the Carnival Squash.

The Cinderella pumpkin is fun to paint...use a very holey sponge to layer it with transparent oranges and top it off with quin rose to give it the veiny look.  I did the same thing on the Jarrahdale pumpkin using grey greens and finally a bluey green mix.  You have to let it dry between layers...thats the hardest part.  If you get it to heavy wad up a kleenex or a paper towel to blot some of the color off.  

The purpley background...started as cerulean and yellow ochre. I really think the purpley color made the pumpkins pop ALOT.   I wish I had taken a photo of it with just the cerulean.   I decided to change it to hematite and cobalt blue - both transparent colors.  I literally just slopped it on both times with a very large paint brush.  This whole thing was painted with one size 8 kolinsky sable brush.

Now go forth and paint pumpkins!!