How to Draw a Jack O Lantern

With this spooky step-by-step drawing guide, we will show you how to draw a jack-o-lantern. A jack-o-lantern is a famous symbol of Halloween, often seen in movies, TV shows, and decorations during the holiday season. Follow the simple steps below to create your spooky pumpkin to add to your Halloween clipart collection.

Create a collection of spooky drawings to complement your jack-o-lantern illustration. Create a colony of bat drawings, or learn how to draw a ghost to frighten anyone.

To get started, you need to get your drawing material ready. Use your favorite traditional or digital tools, such as paint, pencils, and Procreate. We used this versatile Procreate brush kit to sketch, outline, and apply color to our pumpkin artwork.

Step 1 - Draw the Basic Pumpkin Shape

We will sketch the pumpkin for our jack-o-lantern with a sketching medium. Your sketching medium can be anything that is erasable or light in color, such as a pencil.

Start sketching the size of the pumpkin drawing you want. Then, add the ribs and other elements like a stem. If you need an in-depth tutorial, we have a guide on how to draw a pumpkin that you can use for this first step.

Step 2 - Create the Jack O Lantern Face

For our second step, continue using your sketching medium. We will now create the face on the pumpkin you just sketched. Why not grab a ready-made jack-o-lantern face graphic from our collection?

Draw the Eyes

In the upper center of your pumpkin, add the eyes. The eyes can be any shape, from curved half circles like our example below to hearts, rectangles, or triangles. Make sure to leave space between the eyes, as you will draw two shapes for the nose below it.

Draw the Mouth

Draw the jack-o-lantern's mouth below the nose, stretching across the pumpkin. For our example, we drew jagged lines to create the mouth shape and left an opening in the middle.

Add Dimension

Create a realistically carved pumpkin by adding an offset to your jack-o-lantern face. Inside the jack-o-lantern sketch, add an edge to show the pumpkin flesh.

Step 3 - Create a Jack O Lantern Outline

With your sketches made, switch to a darker medium to define your lines. Use any permanent medium, like a pen, marker, or these ink Procreate brushes. This will create a clean and precise line art style Halloween drawing to add color.

Carefully begin tracing the jack-o-lantern face and other elements that do not include the pumpkin shape, such as the stem.

Then define the pumpkin sketch lines. To make sure your outline isn't too busy, leave gaps in the ribs as we did in our image below.

Step 4 - Add Color to your Illustration

In our final step, apply your color, textures, and shading to your Halloween artwork. You will need at least two shades of orange and brown for your coloring. We have the perfect collection of pumpkin color palettes that you could apply.

Apply shadows and highlights to your drawing to create even more depth. Take your artwork to the next level by checking out our tutorial on the four methods of how to blend color in Procreate.

Your jack-o-lantern is done and is sure to add the perfect amount of spook to your projects. Apply these steps to create all kinds of different jack-o-lanterns with other facial expressions. Imagine how great stickers, sublimated t-shirts, and printables will look with your Halloween illustrations.

Thank you for joining our haunting step-by-step drawing exercise. We hope you had a great time learning how to draw with us.