Pumpkin prints

With Halloween and Thanksgiving upon us I am getting inspired by all things pumpkin!
This is a simple paint printing project using the caps of a gallon or half gallon milk jug.

You will need:
 White or other light colored paper
Orange paint or red and yellow to mix
 A  tray or other surface to put the paint on
Markers or colored pencils in green, black, orange and brown.

Step 1 Dip the cap slightly into the orange paint and print an arrangement or circles on the paper.Let the printed circles dry.

Step 3 Go into the dry circles with marker of pencils and either draw Jack o lantern faces or pumpkin ribs.

                                                                   

Step 4 If you want to make the project more elborate cut the pumpkins out and make an scene with them on another sheet of paper.

Pumpkin collages

This a quick one day project you can finish it in under a half hour.Prep time goes quick with use of a paper cutter. I cut orange construction paper into strips 1 to 2 inches wide and smaller strips of green paper. Students had a choice of stacking strips horizontally or vertically and rounding off the edges to create the shape of their pumpkin. some choose to let the black background paper show through and others did not. I let the students choose if their pumpkins would have a face or not.

I just love fall! I get so much inspiration from this season. The sights, the sounds the colors. I love picking pumpkins and painting/ carving them. I love hayrides, long walks to see the changing leaves and warm apple cider. So I have been working on a series of different fall themed drawings with students. For my Saturday classes for 7-10 year olds we have been creating fall scenes using markers. We talked about how to get different values out of the marker color be varying the pressure you apply on the marker. We also have a small how to draw a pumpkin tutorial and a discussion on horizon line and foreground, background and middle ground. We discussed how items in the front are larger then items in the back.

I created another variation of a marker drawing. The one below was draw with water based markers then a used a brush and brushed water back into it for a more water color effect.