Another Still Life Painting – Autumn Theme with Carnival Squash

Whether your still life painting, landscape painting, taking photos or just living your life, the visual inspiration of fall is a full-blown carnival for the senses. There is so much natural beauty in fall  it's easy to find a treasure of subject matter. What's not so easy is to know what to leave out of a composition. In this particular still life painting, a Carnival Squash was used as the main object...     

Still Life Painting Featuring a Carnival Squash

 The inspiration for this still life painting was what I thought was a cool looking pumpkin, only to find out later it is a "Carnival Squash." I still want to call it a pumpkin...by the way, it is amazing how many types of pumpkins and squash there are! Placing the squash on a small, weathered, wooden box and then surrounding the two with the other items in the still life was fun, and I tried a lot of different versions. The pear and the tomatoes were chosen for shape and color first, and subject matter second.  Painting pumpkins is very similar to being back in drawing class and trying to get those spheres just right, isn't it? During this still life painting I decide to use Indian Yellow, which I haven't used in a long time. Indian Yellow has a real nice warm glow to it, and is fairly transparent in quality. Like most yellows, a little bit goes a long way. I'm going to have to use it more often. Other colors used in this still life painting were olive-green, raw umber, terra rosa, yellow ochre, cad red light, cad yellow medium, titanium white, and ivory black.

Another Still Life Painting with an Autumn Theme

 The last still life painting I painted with a fall theme, "Autumn Centerpiece," featured three different pumpkins with three different colors and three different sizes. Cad Yellow Medium and Yellow Ochre were mostly used in that painting, no Indian Yellow. So if you are painting any fall themed still life paintings, or landscapes for that matter, enjoy all that nature has to offer. Choose your main subject, build around it, and even though there is so much to choose from, try not to include everything you see in your work. Remember, that not all pumpkins are orange, and some can even be mistaken for squash...