Painting Class Week Two: Pumpkins

These are the pumpkins we painted from painting class today, scroll down to see the rest. Both kids goal was to learn loading their brush properly and blending. DJ has mastered this quite well on paper, but pumpkins are very hard to paint on. The natural grooves in the pumpkin make for non smooth strokes and the texture of the pumpkin is much different than paper. Since the paint does not absorb into the pumpkin you need much less paint than would be required on paper. Caitlin drew several faces on hers, and DJ made a scary face with blue blending all around the pumpkin. My mom did all kinds of odds and ends on hers. Mine was supposed to be a sunflower, but as you look at the picture it was way to big to look right. Thank goodness the pumpkin has another side, and as you can see it is much better. I showed the paper and plates that we did just to show the difference in the way the paint and strokes look on the two textures. In two weeks we are painting turkeys on glass bottles. We will have fun with that too.