Female Sperm Whale Diving off Yonaguni Island Submarine Ruins

ARTIST: William Louis ("Bill") McDonald

TIME: Circa 25 NOVEMBER 1973

AGE: I was age eleven-and-a-half-plus in late November at El Dorado School in Orange, California.

MEDIA: Grumbacher Oil Paints on Canvas utilizing linseed oil, turpentine, sable paintbrushes, saliva and palette knives.

NOTE: I was age eleven when I executed this painting and somehow, I succeeded in conveying the true proportions and the true perspective of a female Physeter macrocephalus (Formerly Physeter catodon). I missed the fact that her musculature in front of the flukes should have been built up more but my understanding the configuration of her flukes was much improved. Proportionally, her flippers were much improved and were approaching accuracy. Laguna Beach whale artist and naturalist Peter Paul Ott, another teacher of mine, always pointed out the positives I had made with this hungry girl. White markings are common around this species' mouths, jaw, and genitals. I first rendered white markings on this female.

LOCATION: The Art Lab at El Dorado School in Orange, California on Chapman Avenue where Preston and Dixie Hibbard of Dixie Doodle Entertainment taught art. I was in the fifth grade and Preston Hibbard, who was a world famous artist and painter along with being a world famous Santa Claus who was hired every year by Actress Elizabeth Taylor and Country Singer Kenny Rogers; adopted me as yet another of his many sons and became like my "Other Father." Years later, Preston Hibbard became famous in Hollywood for collecting the dead palm bark which he used as his canvases for creating colorful harlequin, jester, Punch & Judy, acrobats, French "Saltimbanques" and South Pacific Tiki faces. Preston died in bed by his favorite window late in the overnight while staring out at a full moon over the Pacific Ocean on 22 DECEMBER 2000.

ALSO: The Laguna Niguel, California retirement home of comic artist, cartoonist, watercolor artist and oil painter Roger Armstrong and his wife. Roger Armstrong, who died at age 89 in 2007; drew for 'Bugs Bunny,' 'and the Flintstones' books. His five-decade career as a cartoonist included doing artwork for “Bugs Bunny,” “The Flintstones” and numerous other comic books as well as for comic strips featuring characters such as Little Lulu and Scamp. He was good friends with my grandmother and one of my teachers.

SPONSORS: The Laguna Niguel Art Association, association board members Wallace I. and Rita Curtis' Swim School in Laguna Niguel, California and my grandmother, Esther Frances ("Great Grandma Snow White") Coutu, a painter of roses, from Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts who had relocated to Monarch Beach, California. Preston, Roger, Rita, and Snow White ganged up on me to work this canvas as my school project and as a future entry into the Laguna Beach Festival Of The Arts Juniors Division in Laguna Beach, California.

INSPIRATIONS: Very rare and very early-on underwater photographs taken by marine and whale fishery scientists working on Japanese fishing trawlers and Japanese Naval vessels. These whales wee brutally hunted by the Japanese and they hunted them with underwater cameras to the same degree that they hunted them with exploding harpoons.

My other inspiration was the sperm whale population which migrated yearly through the waters of the Ryukyu Islands to Japan's south. "Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography"), also known as "Yonaguni (Island) Submarine Ruins" (与那国（島）海底遺跡, Yonaguni(-jima) Kaitei Iseki), is a submerged rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan.