Last Updated on September 16, 2026 by Dee
There is a particular kind of pleasure in handing someone a card you painted yourself, and an autumn pumpkin is about the friendliest thing there is to paint. It is a ball with lines on it. That is the whole drawing. So I pulled one page out of my heirloom pumpkin set and made it free: one printable sheet with two fold-flat A6 card blanks on it, a Cinderella pumpkin and a Turban gourd, with the fold line already marked.
Print it on watercolour paper, paint it this evening, fold it, and you have a card. Pop your email in the box below and the template lands in your inbox straight away — no confirmation click to chase.
Get the free pumpkin card template
Table of Contents
What You Get in the Free Pumpkin Card Template
It is a four page PDF, but only one page is a template — that is deliberate. One page, printed once, is a finished card tonight rather than a folder of good intentions.
- One A4 template sheet with two fold-flat card blanks on it, each 210 × 148 mm. Fold print-side-out and you get a 105 × 148 mm (A6) portrait card.
- Two heirloom varieties: a Cinderella (Rouge Vif d’Étampes) on the top blank and a Turban Gourd on the bottom one. The pumpkin sits 80 mm wide on each front.
- A back panel that is already finished — the left half of each blank carries the variety name and a small credit line, so the back of your card looks intentional.
- A paint notes page in my actual voice, not a list of hex codes.
- A page about the full set at the end, in case you want the other nineteen pumpkins.
How to print it
Print at 100%, not fit to page. The blanks are real-world sizes, and if the printer rescales them they stop fitting standard A6 envelopes. In the print dialog set Scale: 100% (macOS) or Actual size (Windows), and choose paper size A4 rather than fit-to-A4.
Use watercolour paper, 200 to 300 gsm. Ordinary printer paper buckles the moment you put a wet brush on it. Heavy paper needs the straight paper path, which on most inkjets is the rear or manual feed tray, one sheet at a time. Let the sheet sit flat for a minute before you start painting.
There is only one cut: the horizontal line across the middle of the page. Everything else is a fold.
How to Paint It: Five Steps, One of Them Is Doing Nothing
Pumpkins are the easiest thing in the world to paint badly and one of the easiest to paint beautifully, and the difference is almost entirely about letting the water do the work. Here is the whole method.
1. Wet one section at a time
Clean brush, plain water, and wet just one segment of the pumpkin — right up to the pencil line but not over it. You want the paper to shine, not to puddle. One section, not the whole pumpkin, or the sections bleed into each other and you lose the ribs.
2. Drop the colour in at the bottom
Load your brush with a rusty red and touch it into the bottom of that wet section. Do not paint it on. Put it down and lift the brush away.
3. Let it climb
The colour creeps up into the wet paper on its own and stops somewhere soft. That soft stop is the light sitting on top of the pumpkin, and it is the one thing you genuinely cannot fake by painting a highlight in afterwards.
4. Then leave it alone
Truly. Every single time I go back in to tidy a section while it is still damp I get a hard edge or a cauliflower bloom. Let it dry, then move on — and skip to a section that is not touching a wet one so they do not run together.
5. Stem last
When the body of the pumpkin is properly dry, paint the stem and the little curl in a soft brown, and the leaf in a green with a touch of your red mixed into it so it belongs to the same picture rather than looking stuck on.
Which red should I use?
Any red you already own. I use a warm brick red and drop a little orange into it while it is still wet, so the pumpkin shifts colour across itself instead of sitting flat. There is no exact recipe in the free page on purpose — go and play with what is in your palette. (If you would rather not guess, the paid set has a colour recipe card for every variety, with five sampled swatches and a mix hint each.)
If perfect edges are the thing stopping you from starting, read Wonky Watercolour first. Wonky is the point.
The Full Set: 20 Heirloom Pumpkins and Gourds
Your Cinderella is one of twenty. The full set is called Pumpkins & Heritage Gourds, and the whole point of it is true varietal colour — Marina di Chioggia is a sea-glass blue-green, Galeux d’Eysines is a dusty salmon pink, Black Futsu is nearly black under a silvery bloom, and Lumina and Casper are two completely different whites.
- 20 pencil lineart templates, A4 portrait at 300 DPI: Sugar Pie, Long Pie, Cinderella, Jack Be Little, Marina di Chioggia, Musquée de Provence, Black Futsu, Galeux d’Eysines, Knucklehead, Speckled Hound, Lumina, Casper, Bicolor Pear Gourd, Atlantic Giant, Turban, Swan-neck, Bottle, Dipper, Apple and Spoon Gourd.
- 20 colour recipe cards — five swatches per variety sampled straight off my own painting, each with a descriptive name and a mix hint.
- An identifier index, all twenty varieties on one page.
- The make sheets: card fronts (A6 and 5 × 7 in), gift tags, bookmarks and a framed mini — including the page you just downloaded.
Where the Full Set Lives: My Patreon
Everything watercolour I make goes to my Patreon first. Members get the lineart, the painted references and the colour recipes for every set, and Pumpkins & Heritage Gourds lands there on Monday 14 September.
👉 Come and paint with me on Patreon
If a membership is not your thing, that is completely fine — the set is also £14 as a one-off on Payhip from the same Monday, yours to keep.
Either way, you can sell the cards, tags and paintings you make by hand with these pages. Please just never sell or share the files themselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the pumpkin card template really free?
Yes. Put your email in the form on this page and the PDF arrives straight away. There is no confirmation email to click and no card details anywhere.
What size is it?
A4 portrait, 2480 × 3508 pixels at 300 DPI. If you are in the US, print with fit to page and it will sit happily on Letter with a small margin — the finished card just comes out a whisker smaller.
Do I need watercolour paper?
For painting, yes, honestly. Printer paper buckles and pills the moment it gets wet. 200 gsm is the minimum I would use and 300 gsm is lovely. If all you have is printer paper, use coloured pencil or brush pens on it instead — the lineart works perfectly well dry.
Can I use it with coloured pencils or markers instead?
Absolutely. It is just an outline. Alcohol markers will bleed through thin paper, so keep a scrap sheet underneath.
Can I sell the cards I make?
Yes — anything you paint by hand with these pages is yours to sell, at a stall, a fair or online. What you may not do is sell or share the digital files, or fold them into a kit of your own.
What if the email does not arrive?
Check your promotions tab and your spam folder first, then add info@artsydee.com to your contacts. If it still has not turned up, email me at info@artsydee.com and I will send it over by hand.
More Free Watercolour Printables
Grab the card template in the form below, then have a wander through these:
- The Watercolour Idea Menu — a free printable for the days you do not know what to paint
- Pumpkin Drawing: 12 Easy Ideas for Beginners (+ Free Printable Templates)
- 30+ Free Pumpkin Coloring Pages (Printable PDF)
- 16 Sunflower Watercolor Tutorials (+ Free Printable Template)
Get the free pumpkin card template
One page, two card blanks, and the paint notes. Pop your email in the box below and it is on its way.
Go and get something wet. Dee x