How to Paint Watercolor Pumpkins That Glow in the Dark

Hi everybody, welcome to another watercolor lesson and today I’m going to show you how to paint these Halloween pumpkins that look like they’re glowing in the dark! 

The tricky part is that in watercolor, the brightest thing is the white of the paper. So the glow has to be planned from the very beginning, otherwise it gets painted over and you end up with a pumpkin that just looks, well, orange, rather than lit up from the inside!. So grab your brushes and get ready. But do try not to let your hand shake too much !

Watercolor Jack O’lantern

Before we get into the painting process, I just wanted to talk quickly about the composition of these carved pumpkins or as some of you might know them ‘jack-o-lanterns’. Notice, for example, that I chose to paint three lanterns. Grouping in odd numbers like this generally improves compositions. There’s something about odd numbers which is pleasing to the eye.

And notice also how the lantern faces get progressively bigger. This gives an impression of movement, as if the lanterns are coming towards us, and it helps lead the eye to the biggest face, which becomes the focus of the painting.

I mention this because I think that if you keep little composition tricks like this in mind when you plan your projects it can go a long way to improving your paintings.

Begin by transferring the outline of the subject onto watercolor paper, then fix the sheet down onto a flat board with masking tape. This just helps stop the paper moving around while you paint and it will produce a nice white margin around the finished painting.

Start by painting the eyes, nose and mouth shapes with a cool yellow color.

For example I’m using Daniel Smith Lemon yellow for this – For reference here’s a list of all the colors used in this painting (Please note, these are affiliate link​s):

• Hansa Yellow Deep – Pigment number: PY65
• Lemon yellow – Pigment number: PY175
• French ultramarine – Pigment number: PB29
• Pyrrol scarlet – Pigment number: PR255
• Burnt umber – Pigment number: PBr7

 While the first layer of paint is still wet, add a warmer yellow color to the outer edges of the eyes, mouth, and teeth. Adding color like this is a wet-on-wet technique known as “dropping-in” or “charging-in”, and it’s a way of blending colors to produce a soft diffused edge.

Next use a blotted brush to remove some of the color in the brightest parts of the mouth and eyes. This is a technique known as “lifting off”. 

The objective is to paint a gradient of warm colors ranging from light to dark orange, to reproduce the glowing appearance of the jack o’lanterns.

Paint the other lantern faces using the same method. Start will a wash of cool yellow, then charge-in some warmer yellow paint. When you’re finished leave the paint to dry completely.

Mix up some orange paint and start painting the teeth and the outer edges of the eye and mouth shapes. Use a blotted brush to blend out the edges of your brush marks. Refer to the reference photo to help locate the areas to paint.

Again let the paint dry. As a final touch mix up a neutral orange color and deepen the tonal values of the teeth and the inside of the eyes.

This time don’t blend the edges of your brush strokes. Leave the hard edges of your brush marks to add some more texture to the painting.

Now that the eyes and mouths are finished you can move on to painting the faces.

We want the faces to be darker because they should fade into the dark background like in the reference photo. For this you need to mix up a more neutral orange color. To achieve this kind of hue, start with an orange mixture and add another paint color to lower the saturation, such as a small amount of blue or burnt umber. 

Paint around the eyes and mouth, then dip you brush in your rinse water and begin to blend out the edges of the face. Keep dipping your brush in the rinse water and blend the color outwards into the background. 

Don’t worry at this stage if your brush marks are noticeable. When you paint the darker background these will be mostly masked by the stronger paint color.

Again leave the paint to dry. At this stage I took advantage to add some detail to the faces to represent the vertical segment lines on the surface of the pumpkin. Use the tip of a clean damp brush to make vertical brush strokes. This is another example of a lifting technique. 

The background is painted using a wet-on-wet technique (this is when you apply wet paint to a damp surface). The reason for using this method is because I wanted the edges of the background color to blend smoothly around the glowing eyes and mouths of the jack o’lanterns.

The difficulty with painting backgrounds in watercolors is that if you don’t work quickly enough your paint will dry and you end up with visible brush marks. So to avoid this problem I started by pre-wetting the surface of the paper with clear water, being careful dampen everything except the eye, mouth and nose shapes.

For the background mix up a dark purple color.

To mix this color I used a combination of warm red and warm blue. (E.g: french Ultramarine and Pyrrol Scarlet).

Notice when you apply the purple paint to the damp paper the color diffuses more evenly across the surface. You can use your brush to push the paint pigments around and achieve a nicely blended edge around the faces. 

When the background dries you’ll notice that the color looks lighter than when you were painting. this is one of the characteristics of watercolor paint. 

So to deepen the value of the background we can simply apply the same same process again.

Re-wet the background with clear water, making sure not to wet the eyes or mouths. Then add another layer of purple to the background.

When the paint was completely dry I added some final touches by lifting off some more paint to reinforce the vertical ribs on the pumpkins.  

And there you go ! You now have a spine-chilling watercolor painting for Halloween!

Happy painting, and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

(P.S. If you don’t want to miss any of the other lessons in this Halloween painting series, and you’d like to follow along with the full series, you can sign up here!)