Painting is playtime for me. I try not to take it too seriously since my livelihood is not dependent on it. It has always been an exercise of exploration and fun with occasional frustration mixed in.
Recently I harvested a spaghetti squash, which is known as Shark-fin-squash where I grew up. Instead of turning to mush like pumpkin when cooked, this squash has flesh with distinct filaments. The strands look like spaghetti, hence the name; or like strands of shark fin used in shark fin soup. The squash itself has a delicate sweet taste to it and is quite refreshing, unlike the over-the-top, decadent shark fin soup. I halved the squash, scraped off the seeds and boiled the squash to soften the flesh. After the softened flesh was scooped out and set aside for cooking, I was left with the tough skin of the squash.
Normally I would have put the skin, or the shell of the squash in the compost to feed a new generation of plants but I felt a sudden urge to play with them this time.
I wanted to do some calligraphy on them.
I did not anticipate the difficulties that were presented. First off I just picked a brush that was laying around, which was not particularly suitable for calligraphy. The most challenging part was the fact that the surface was not flat, it was dome shaped. Unlike writing on a piece of flat paper, it was difficult to maintain a proper angle between the brush and the squash. The result were a lot of glancing blows where a proper brush tip was impossible to maintain and I wasn't able to control the nudging and pressing of the brush. I subsequently changed to a brush that I use for calligraphy (small piece on the left),
