Few artists bring as much joy and playfulness to their work as Yayoi Kusama! Students created colourful pumpkin pieces inspired by Kusama’s signature polka-dot style. Working on a cardboard surface, they used sponge stampers to build bold, patterned backgrounds in contrasting colours.
Using a pumpkin shape template printed on card stock, students added colour with oil pastels. They explored smudging and blending techniques before adding Kusama-inspired dots. Once finished, the pumpkins were cut out and mounted to the backgrounds with a double-sided foam adhesive, creating a pop-out effect.
Medium: watercolour, oil pastel resist on water colour paper
Each year, I’ve experimented with many different takes on this Kusama-inspired project, from painting bold dots on mini pumpkins to creating large-scale drawn pumpkins.