Of Monsters and Meetings

Well, Sarah and I had our meeting to figure out our joint presentation for the "Water: A Living Lesson" conference. We came up with a running order of the presentation from start to finish using a combination of her presentation called "Water 101" and the "Edwards Aquifer: History of a Rock Star" presentation which is my Doc Ed show for fourth and fifth graders. Plus there are interactive segments using games and hands on activities covering geology, water conservation and preservation. It only took us an hour or so to figure it out. The hard part for me is to translate my Rock Star presentation to Spanish because the workshop is for educators from Central and South America. I'm glad I still have a couple of weeks to get it done.

I presented the Amazing Aquifer Adventure show to a groups of sixty elementary school-age youngsters at Salinas Elementary School Adventure Camp. It went well but working in a gym can be very echo-y. I was very glad when I uttered the last line of the presentation.



The destruction of the lighthouse from the 1951 film "The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms brought to life by stop motion animation master Ray Harryhausen.


I started inking a drawing I'd been wanting to do for a long time. It's a scene from the film "Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms" which is based on the 1951 Ray Bradbury short story " The Foghorn" which was published in the Saturday Evening Post. The short story itself takes place entirely at a lighthouse. It's a story of profound loneliness that spans millions of years for a creature that hears what it believes to be the call of one of it's kind but is only the "Voice" of the foghorn.

There's a scene in the story where the monster rises from the sea to attack the lighthouse, which is in the film version as well, that I chose to illustrate. It's the moment before the monster rears up to destroy the lighthouse after the foghorn stops calling out momentarily. So far so good. I'm taking it slow because I'm using crossing hatching throughout the drawing which can be time consuming but produces beautiful results. I drew my version of a poster for the film "Them", in a similar fashion. That's another giant- monster- on- the- loose film. It's a genre I which I really like.

Below is a link to Wikipedia and The Official Ray Harryhausen website with lots more info on the story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_Horn


http://www.rayharryhausen.com/index.php