Mermaid
work in progress
Here is the sexiest mermaid you will ever see - at least she will be when I've finished her - watch this space.
The story of this mermaid painting is that the rather inadequate towel hooks in my shower room fell off the wall, and I decided to look for something more interesting. I found three different Victorian or Edwardian brass clothes hooks in Greenwich flea market. Then I looked for a suitable board to fix them to.
Finding nothing made to measure I found in B&Q a piece of timber and used a jig-saw to cut it to a Rococo shape. The hooks will be screwed into that. The idea is that when the towels are removed the mermaid will be revealed in all her glory.
I saw my first mermaid picture in a book when I was at primary school - a particularly alluring one with the fishy scales starting lower down the back than usual. I regard such pictures as likely to be closer to the reality of mermaids, because it is their job to be alluring. Why otherwise would sailors be lured to their doom on the rocks? If mermaids were demurely attired then the sailors would just wave as they sailed by, with a cheery "Ahoy there Mavis!" (or whatever the mermaid's name happened to be), "Can't stop now, busy day."
I like the idea of a little visual stimulation early in the morning, to help the circulation.
At first the wood looked very flat and I was going to create raised edges with paper maché, but after beginning painting the three dimensional effect looked convincing enough not to bother with that.
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