It Must Be Autumn

Snow may already be falling in some parts of the world, but here in the Bay Area, we're only just starting to feel the crisp autumn chill that spells the end of summer. Nothing spells autumn like the warm oranges and browns. And pumpkins. What's best about them is how they go on sale after Halloween even though they can last for months as seasonal decor.

We started by painting our pumpkin  using a high gloss can of white spray paint (since that is what we had on hand). Now, if we had planned things better, we could have simply purchased a white pumpkin and saved ourselves the extra work, but there's something really satisfying about making an organic object appear inorganic simply by changing its color.

After letting the paint dry overnight, we positioned and taped Cavallo onto the pumpkin and used a fine tip permanent marker to trace an outline. We were able to fit three Cavallos on our rather large pumpkin. Don't worry if the outline's not perfect. They're just guides for painting.

We used matte black acrylic paint, but glossy black acrylic paint would also work nicely. Grab a few brushes, and start filling in the oulines. We used a medium flat brush to cover the large areas, and medium round brush for the details, and a small round brush to get to the tips and tiny areas. Errant marks can be simply scratched off when the paint dries.

Once we finished painting the Cavallo pumpkin, wondered what it would look like if we painted directly on the pumpkin, so we tried it with Bass.

The process of painting Shadow Magnets isn't difficult, but it does take a bit of time, so for our third pumpkin, we decided to freehand some patternwork. The final result: