Our little girl loves books. She has gone through many different favorites in her five years on this earth. They usually change from week to week. Ever since we have gotten into chapter books though, there has only been one favorite and that is Captain Underpants. She cannot get enough of him and his sidekicks, George and Harold. We have read them all. She draws the characters all the time and the characters have even inspired her to want to become a comic book writer. We went to a local farm this weekend and stocked up on pumpkins. Since my girl loves that whacky superhero so much, I thought that I would make her a Captain Underpants pumpkin to greet her as she leaves the house and comes home from school every day. His simple features made this an easy and fun painted pumpkin.
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Here is one of our daughter’s drawings of Captain Underpants and George and Harold.
Captain Underpants Painted Pumpkin
I used one large round pumpkin for the body and a more narrow pumpkin for the head. Here’s how we did it.
To start, I wanted to cut a bit off the top of the bottom pumpkin so that it was flat. This was the hardest part of our process. I cut it right underneath the stem and kept cutting narrow slices until it was even and flat. Use caution when cutting your pumpkin. I have had many a pumpkin carving accident. There are safer pumpkin cutting options that you can purchase as well.
I also cut a little bit off of the bottom of the top pumpkin so that it would sit flat on the other pumpkin. I need to remove the stem from the top pumpkin, so I twisted and jiggled the stem until it loosened and tore it off.
Next, I used a marker to draw in the outline of underwear on the bottom pumpkin. I painted the underwear using white acrylic paint and then set it aside to dry.
While that paint dried, I drew in the mouth and began painting that as well.
I used black and white acrylic paint for the mouth and then painted thin black vertical lines on the white to form the teeth.
The face was drawn on with a black Sharpie and filled in carefully with just a touch of paint.
When the paint on the underwear dried, I used black paint to outline the underwear and add the details.
I set both pumpkins aside to dry.
Our superhero needed his cape. I found an old red tank top in a bin of old clothes and cut the shirt to form it. My daughter was sure to remind me that his cape had zig zags at the bottom.
She also handed me a marker and told me that the cape needed dots on it.
The last step was to attach the head to the body. I used four wooden kabob skewers to secure the two pumpkins together. I pressed the skewers into the top pumpkin and brought them down carefully onto the body pumpkin.
The finishing touch was wrapping the cape around the two pumpkins and then “Tra La La”. We were done faster than a speeding waistband.
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