Beginner’s Pumpkin Face Painting Guide

Annabel Hoogeveen — 09 October 2018 —

Who said that Halloween is just about scary stuff? How about those little (and big) ones who still want to celebrate but dislike gore?

Don’t worry! We’ve got a solution for you! 😃

Our certified School instructor Annabel Hoogeveen prepared a super cute themed face painting tutorial for you!

Another great news is that our Halloween pumpkin face painting is very fast and very easy to reproduce, so even if you’re a beginner you can surprise your clients with this stunning design!

Get Your Beginner Pumpkin Face Paint Kit Here

Let’s begin!

To be honest, for me Halloween is not my favorite time of the year. I get scared easily and I really don’t like painting all the scary and gruesome designs.

So, being a face painter and not being able to just skip Halloween, I have to come up with on-the-job designs I do like to paint. And this is one of them: a quick, one-stroke Pumpkin Mask for little Pumpkin hero’s.

When the idea of a pumpkin mask popped up in my head, I started searching the internet to see if it had already been painted before. But I didn’t find anything that resembled my first sketch, and that seemed odd to me then. After the first attempt on my son I knew why ;-).

My original plan was to recreate the characteristic 3D pumpkin look using a one-stroke, in a ‘superhero’ color, blue. I choose blue because I wanted it to look ‘cool’, I wanted to make my own “Pumpkin Power Hero” :-).

It looked great on my sketch, but it certainly did not look good on the face :-(. Making it look like a convex pumpkin mask, turned out to be very difficult with the concave nose and the cut out eyes.

So my plans had to change: less 3D, and more original color, but still using one-stroke.

Annabel Hoogeveen

Are you a beginner? Check out our Free Guide for Beginner Face Painter and learn where to start, what tools to buy and how to face paint many amazing popular designs! 😎

Tip: Click here to download this super useful “Top 10 products a face painter needs” handout! It’s FREE!

Materials used:

a boy with an outline of a pumpkin face paint design

Step 1: Sketching the Outline of Easy Pumpkin Face Paint

Because I wanted it to look like a pumpkin as much as possible, the outer shape of the mask was very important.

That’s why I started with sketching the outlines of my design and the placement of the eyes, using a round brush #3 and a watery yellow paint. Once you painted this design more often, you don’t need to do this anymore.

a boy with a filled orange outline of a pumpkin face paint design

Step 2: Halloween Pumpkin Face Paint One-Stroke Base

To continue making easy pumpkin face paint, use a yellow-orange-red-dark red split cake and a ⅝# angle brush paint the base. Start with the yellow lines next to the eyes.

Then flip your brush and keep the light color on the outside while painting ‘bands’.

For the central ‘band’ flip your brush again, so the lightest part is in the middle suggesting a convex shape.

Because I don’t want the bands to be separated too much, I blend them together a bit more by going over the borders a few times.

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a boy with an unfinished orange pumpkin face paint around his eyes

Step 3 (Optional): Outlining the Pumpkin Halloween Makeup

If you find it difficult to paint a nice and crisp black outline with a round brush, especially around the eyes, you can use a small flat or angle brush too.

For this step, I used a ¼# angle brush and a one-stroke with black and dark red next to each other. Keep the black on the outside and blend the red into the base with your finger if necessary.

Using a one-stroke for this makes the black softer and gives a bit of shading to the pumpkin face paint.

a boy with an almost finished orange pumpkin face paint around his eyes

Super Tip: our Ultimate Halloween Face Paint Inspiration Guide is loaded with designs to suit every taste: spooky, super cute, gorey, bewitching, scary, cool — if you can imagine it, you’ll find it here. You don’t want to miss out on this amazing free resource!

Step 4: Texture and Outline

To continue with making pumpkin Halloween makeup, add some texture using a stencil. For the top part use a light yellow, for the bottom part a darker color or black.

Next paint the pumpkin stalk and the outlines with regular black and a round brush #3.

If you have little time, you can finish here and leave the design like this.

Are you struggling with obtaining clean line work? 😰
Be sure to enroll in our “Improve Your Linework in 3 Days” FREE Online Workshop today! 😍

a boy with an shaded orange pumpkin face paint around his eyes

Step 5: Adding Highlights

To make it pop a bit more, add some highlights with regular white and a round brush #3.

a boy looking at the camera at an angle with a pumpkin face paint

Step 6: Finishing Touch to The Pumpkin Face Paint

Some boys have a small forehead, others have a bigger one. If there is a lot of empty space, you can add some bats in the background.

One-stroke Pumpkin Mask tutorial

Are you looking to take professional face painting classes from the comfort of your own home?

IMAGINE… everything that comes from under your brush is making your clients exclaim “WOW!”

…this exact moment when “the kids start smiling and won’t give the Mirror back, this is what makes me Happy!”

👉 Check out what we have to offer you! You are going to love it! ❤️❤️❤️

Take a Class at the International Face Painting School

 — Annabel Hoogeveen

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