Draw a Cartoony Pumpkin

How using basic shapes can enhance your drawing skills.

By Chris Dunmire | Posted 10/27/23 | Updated 10/25/25

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." —Thomas Merton

Did you know?

Using basic shapes like cylinders, cones, circles, and blocks as building blocks in your art aligns with how our brain "sees" objects. In 1987, American Vision Scientist Irving Biederman proposed the "Recognition-by-Components" theory to explain how we recognize objects by their basic shapes. He said there's 24 basic shapes (or "geons"), that can be combined for all objects.

In her book, 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, author Susan Weinschenk says to use simple shapes "If you want people to quickly recognize what an object is." Discussing Biederman's theory of geons with the image above, she notes that basic shapes scale better than those with lots of detail. She says, "The smaller the object, the more important it is to use simple geons without a lot of embellishment."

So, no matter if you're an experienced or beginner artist or designer, using simple shapes to develop your concepts is a foundational approach for others to quickly identify your subject matter.

Here's a simple drawing of the popular orange gourd, known for it's more common name: pumpkin.

When you look at objects in nature in their most basic forms, notice their shape. What do you see?

Pumpkins have a circle body and triangular stem.

Try the three drawing steps and then add some color. See if what Thomas Merton says is true.

Like people, pumpkins have unique characteristics from their imperfections and varied rounded shapes like tall and narrow, short and squat, and shades of color.

Here's my pumpkins. Now draw three different pumpkins of your own!

Example Pumpkins

Halloween