How To Paint Your Own Pennywise Pumpkin

pennywise-pumpkin-screenshot

how-to-make-a-pennywise-pumpkin

This Halloween season, Pennywise, from the movie IT is the go-to movie to see.  I’m seeing all kinds of articles on how you can rock this clown custom for Halloween 2017, but I thought I’d turn Pennywise into my kinda craft- a pumpkin, of course.  Let me just tell you, taking the above pic was pretty amusing.  Instead of scouting for models, I went scouting for gutters in my neighborhood. LOL. I think the end result turned out pretty sweet.  And fun fact, I’ve never seen this movie or the original that all my friends were scared of when I was a child of the 90’s.  I do recognize a viral character when I see it, and knew I had to get on the clown action.

What you’ll need:

– White medium-sized pumpkin
– Red, black, and white acrylic paints
– Tacky Glue
– Paintbrushes
– Red feather marabou boa
– Scissors

Before you begin:  I painted the off-white pumpkin with white acrylic paint to give the clown a more pale complexion.

Next pull up a pic of Pennywise for reference…I did my project freehand, but you can plot yours out with pencil if you’d like.

pull-up-a-pic-of-pennywise

I then painted my pumpkin as shown below…I started with a liner brush drawing the red on the lips, I then went back in around the lips adding outlines and shading.  Around the grin, I added lines to accentuate.

Next I drew the red lines that go from the grin to above the eyes. After I did that, I added in more additional shading detail and started to draw the eyes and frown lines.

I finished up the face with additional shading and red eyes. For finishing touches, I added some chin and face shape definition. Also clean up any messy details with white paint after everything has dried. My last step was to mix a little glue and paint to make faux cracks and gritty details to the forehead and face. The final step is to cut, then glue on the feather boa to the top of the pumpkin in a horseshoe fashion.

pennywise-pumpkin-illustration

This turned out pretty fun (and creepy).  When I get into the zone painting, I realize how much I enjoy it.

pennywise-pumpkin-3

Taking photos of this pumpkin may have been more fun than actually painting it.  For this one, I hid the pumpkin in some bushes and peeked through to get this shot.  Nothin’ quite like a creepy clown lurking in the shadows.

pennywise-pumpkin-2

And I thought the dead grass and wooden fence at sunset made for a nice backdrop as well.

Let me know what you think of my pumpkin and if it creeps you out.  And fun fact, I actually like clowns…I grew up with paintings of them in my room  as a toddler.  They were mainly the hobo and circus clowns type.  I don’t know if I should watch this movie or not and change my perception.

If you love this project, share it with your friends, and check out this cute stop motion video I did using the steps above to create this DIY project.  I made this little vid for the Darby Smart app! If you want ot make your own DIY vids easily using only your phone, give this app a try. Available now in the app store.

 

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Silvia’s Swell Skull Pumpkin

So I’m back from a hiatus of wedding, honeymoon, friendship, family, and fun!  It was amazing, yet tiring and I’m kinda looking forward to getting back to everyday things!  I promise to share wedding pics very soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to share an awesome pumpkin design by my friend Silvia of GlitaArt!

Silvia is a wonderful illustrator (see her work here) and I really love what she did with Tulip 3D Paint a.k.a. Puffy Paint on this piece.  The black and white on the pumpkin really pop!  She made this last year during a pumpkin painting night at my house, and since it was so great, I just HAD to photograph it with the rest of my pumpkins.  I know I’m always busy creating crazy designs on pumpkins and it’s always refreshing to see a new take on the traditional pumpkin! I love how the black and white just pop!

I’m going to get together with her on Friday night for a gourd painting session, so I’ll try to share any other cool pumpkins that we create on the fly!

Check out my other Halloween Craft & Pumpkin ideas!
<br />
<script src=”http://www.linkytools.com/thumbnail_linky_include.aspx?id=159308″ type=”text/javascript”></script>

Until next time Swellions!
Alexa

Grumpy Cat Pumpkin DIY

Each year on my blog, I get geared up to do atleast one celebrity pumpkin.  This year, my celebrity pumpkin wasn’t the obvious choice Amanda Bynes (truthfully, I think the girl has problems).  It was the favorite cat on the internet of the moment…Grumpy Cat!  Grumpy Cat a.k.a. Tarder Sauce has taken the internet by storm, so why not pumpkins too, right? Now here’s how you can make your very own Grumpy Cat pumpkin!
First up you’ll want to trace on the Grumpy Cat face with a pencil. I referenced some photos of Grumpy Cat I pulled up in a Google image search on my phone.
 I poured out my Tulip Soft Paint colors.  I left plenty of extra room for mixing colors on my plate.
 I next painted the iris and the pupil in a sky blue and black for the pupil.
 Then I outlined the entire eye with black.
Next up was painting the mouth and the pink of the lip and nose. I outlined under the nose to suggest nostrils and a little bit of a shadow.
I then mixed black and brown together to make the patches of brown around his eyes.  I actually used more darker colors around the eye.  I also used the bristles of my angle brush to fan out around the outside of the patch to look like fur.

Now I went back in and added details to give the eyes life using white paint and the liner brush.
My final painting step was to paint on whiskers.  This is the one I still need a bit of practice on!  I struggle with fine line detail while painting.

The final step was to hot glue on the ears using basic felt.  I pinched them in the back and glued them down at the edges to make them perky, attentive ears!

I had fun making some funny meme pics using my new pumpkin.


 As you can tell, Grumpy Cat is NOT looking forward to the upcoming Halloween season.

Here’s a comparison of the real Grumpy Cat with the pumpkin version.  I tried to recreate the original photo that went viral on Reddit, but darn it!  I forgot to put my hand behind the pumpkin head.

My cat Dexter isn’t really liking all this attention the Grumpy Cat pumpkin has been getting.  Turns out that Grumpy Cat makes other cats grumpy too!
Until next time Swellions!

Alexa