Click on File/New/New Image and open a new RGB canvas with a width of 350 pixels and a height of 350 pixels. This image size isn't essential, but it will give you a decent sized canvas with room to work on.

Use the Path Drawing Tool with: Shape - circle; Colour - Orange or hex value #FF6928; Mode - 3D Round; to draw a circle with an approximate width and height of 150 pixels.

Open the Easy Palette and click on Material Attribute Gallery/Bevel BO1. Then click on Material Attribute Gallery/Bump/M30.

Right click on your mouse and select duplicate. Continue to right click and duplicate until you have a total of 6 textured orange circles which will formulate the body of your pumpkin.

Use the Path Drawing Tool with: Shape - Custom Shape A08; Colour - orange or the same hex value as previously used #FF6928; Mode - 3D Round; Border - 60; Depth 30; to draw a triangular shape with an approximate width of 43 pixels and height of 37 pixels. This piece will formulate part of the cut out nose on your pumpkin. Duplicate this triangular piece and change the colour to black and the mode to 2D.

With the black section of the nose still selected, click on Format/Image size. Choose to reduce the size of your selected object to 70% of it's original size. Position the black section over the orange section of the nose. Hold down the Ctrl key to select both pieces and then duplicate them twice. These duplicated pieces will formulate the cutout eyes of your pumpkin. Select all four eye pieces and then click on Edit/Rotate & Flip/ Flip Vertically.

To create the mouth, use the Path Drawing Tool, Shape - Bezier/Polygon; Colour - orange or the same hex value as previously used #FF6928; Mode 3D Round. Click on your mouse to create a jaggered looking mouth and double click at your starting point to finish this piece. Duplicate your jaggered mouth, change the colour of the duplicated piece to black and then using the transform tool, reduce the size of it slightly.

Z-Merging the pumpkin pieces.

We're ready now to z-merge almost all the pieces of the pumpkin created so far.

Select two round pumpkin body pieces. Click on the Z-Merge button and place a check in the Z-Merge box. Change the Z-Elevation to -1024 (minus 1024). Deselect your objects and then move one into the other, positioning them as shown in the image on the right here.

Ooooo I like doing that part :-)

Select another two round pumpkin body pieces. Click on the Z-Merge button and place a check in the Z-Merge box. Change the Z-Elevation to -500 (minus 500). Deselect your objects and then move one into the other, positioning them over the first two z-merged body parts as shown in the image on the right here.

Select the black parts of the eyes, nose and mouth. Click on the Z-Merge button and place a check in the Z-Merge box. Change the Z-Elevation to 1024. Position all facial features into position on the body of your pumpkin as shown in the image on the right here.

Hey that was easy wasn't it? All that's left to do now is to finish off your pumpkin by adding a stem, leaf and back segment.

Using the Path Drawing Tool with: Shape - Freehand; Colour - Dark Green; Mode - 3D Round; to draw a stem shape. It doesn't have to be too accurate looking but you'll find it a lot easier to draw if you change the accuracy level to 10 in the Path Panel box.

Using the Path Drawing Tool with: Shape - Custom Shape Leaf 6; Colour - Dark Green; Mode - 3D Round; to draw leaf that will attach to the pumpkin stem. The leaf will look a lot nicer if you change the depth of it to -30 (minus 30) in the Path Panel box, but that's a matter of preference.

Position both the stem and leaf toward the top of your pumpkin and then slide the last orange body piece just behind.

All that's left to do now is to add a shadow to your pumpkin, so right click on your mouse to Select All Objects, right click again, Merge As Single Object. Right click one more time to select Shadow. The shadow settings I chose to use are as shown on the left here. A right perspective shadow with: Tilt Angle - 50; Perspective - 70; Transparency - 60; Shadow Size - 100 and Soft Edge 10.

Save your finished pumpkin as a .ufo or to your Easy Palette ready to use in your own Autumn/Winter image.

I hope you've enjoyed doing this tutorial as much as I have writing it.

Finally I wish to say a special thank you to DSHistorian (a PIRC Bulletin Board member) for allowing me to use his original z-merged pumpkin idea on which this tutorial is based.