Painting on pumpkins: Meet Spooky and Lightning

Painting pumpkins as a homeschool art project

We had a rather frightening crop of surprise pumpkins in our side yard this year, thanks to my spur-of-the-moment decision last fall to throw our rotting pumpkins on the compost heap.

Painting pumpkins as a homeschool art project

These things were HUGE. They, along with two Attack of the Killer Tomatoes plants, took over a side of the house.

Well, we harvested them (finally) and came up with quite the showing of pumpkins and gourds! Until now, though, they’d all simply been sitting on our bench out front, not even particularly decoratively.

Painting pumpkins as a homeschool art project

About two days ago, Ashar came in and wanted to know if she could paint a pumpkin. She had one all picked out – and named him Spooky.

Tonight after dinner, she set to painting. You can see Spooky, mostly finished, above. He’s got a green scar and large, fang-like teeth.

Ashar says he has a green scar “because he was playing in the grass and he got a stain that never came off.” There you have it!

Painting pumpkins as a homeschool art project

After doing the first one, she thought she’d do another. This time, she first tried to write out a quote about happiness, but quickly realized that long quotes and small pumpkins aren’t an ideal fit.

Thankfully, acrylic paint washes off of pumpkins! (Add that to the list of things Mom learned today!)

Painting pumpkins as a homeschool art project

So instead, happy with how Spooky turned out, Ashar created a brother for him, this time named Lightning. (Because he has a lightning-like yellow birthmark.)

Painting pumpkins as a homeschool art project

The best part, in my opinion, is that they both have a “mohawk.” Ashar said she wanted to do something with the stem other than having it look like a stem, so she painted both and said, “Look, mohawks!”

Happy fall!

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6 thoughts on “Painting on pumpkins: Meet Spooky and Lightning

    • Judy, that’ll make her day – thank you so much! I also thought it was funny – we’re not much for Halloween, and when she said she wanted to paint a “spooky” pumpkin I was kind of wondering what she meant… FRIENDLIEST spooky I’ve ever seen! 🙂

  1. Sarah did an awesome job! Keilee and I love the pumpkins! I love how she named them and they had a ‘back story’. That is such the mark of creativity to me. I always loved how J.K. Rowling knew so much about her characters that never showed up in the books. I think Keilee is going to decorate pumpkins today! I would love to grow pumpkins. You just threw the entire pumpkin outside?

    • Yup! We compost and just threw the old ones right on the heap. They liquefied and planted themselves and we had a regular ol’ pumpkin and gourd farm!

      I can’t wait to see what you ladies come up with! Knowing Kei they’ll be very creative and bright!

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