Bitter melon

I saw this curious thing in the new(ish) Indian supermarket near Access to Music/Epic on Magdalen St, and thought it looked like a good subject for a painting. It's a bitter melon, a kind of cucumber/gourd thing, widely used in all Asian cookery. Can't waste it so will be reporting back later on that.

This needs a few tidying touches, but generally I'm pleased. It was daunting - all those knobbles and ridges, and it's not particularly big either, just 20cms tip to tip. I did it roughly to scale though, partly because the paper I have won't let me go much bigger anyway.

I didn't stretch the paper -  I thought it might be heavy enough to not cockle (my new favourite word), but you can clearly see that it did. Not too much, at least not enough to abandon the process.  But now I'll need to attempt a post-painting stretch...lots of people online suggesting it can be done with a steam iron. That sounds drastic, so I'll do a bit of research and a test run before trying it on this.