As you may know, I teach acrylic painting on the weekends. Sometimes, I get ahead of the class and I have to wait for everyone to catch up. (This is why I frequently use a much larger canvas, simply so I can slow down a bit.) Sometimes I bring along an extra canvas for me to make a start on while I'm waiting and that's what happened here.

They discontinued a bunch of round canvases at the store so I picked up a few to see what I could do with them. I did a few sketches and one of the designs was a mermaid looking through a porthole. She turned out a tad... creepier than expected. Heh.

Unfortunately, the hubs came down with a summer cold when I needed a frame made and since I was running out of time, I decided to make one out of polymer clay. It was quite easy and got rid of a LOT of junk clay -- you know, all those odd bits and pieces leftover from other projects -- and to keep it light, I used a core of aluminum foil. While I was at it, I decided to add her fingertips coming in the window, something that I'd tried to paint in but never quite worked.

It's going to be up on my panel at FenCon this weekend. I don't know if it'll sell but it'll certainly be different.

Acrylic painting & polymer clay sculpture by CSHayden © 2011