Tag Archives: Watercolor

New Painting Post

Magnificent Frigatebirds

This time it’s another graphite and watercolor illustration for John Vigor’s article in Good Old Boat magazine. Magnificent Frigatebirds aren’t new to us, but I never get to paint them – and they sure aren’t around Port Townsend. We’ve seen them while we were camping on the beaches in Mexico, we saw them often while we sailed Ave Mariadown the Baja Coast and up into the Sea of Cortez. Just last year we saw them at Everglades National Park, soaring over the mosquitoes at Flamingo.

These birds are real aerial pirates that never, I mean never, land on water. They soar endlessly along oceanic coastlines even as they sleep. In fact, the only other bird species known to spend days AND nights in flight is the common swift. But being amazingly good at one thing usually means we’re goofy at anything else, and so the frigatebird cannot walk, swim or take off from a flat surface (we’re talking about jumping off a cliff ). Frigatebirds sport a very wicked upper bill that angles down like a fish hook, enabling the birds to latch onto morsels as they fly by, or, they steal it from other birds (chicks in nests included). At 90 inches, frigatebirds have the longest wingspan relative to weight of any bird on the planet. The reddish throat pouch-thingy on males inflates during courtship or while the male is nest-sitting, giving them a rather bizarre look. When I saw a kid (centuries ago) I remember they were called “Man O’war” after the old frigates, which the big birds use to follow for food scrapes.

And you all thought I was just a painter.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

New Painting Post

Painting Some Interesting Wildlife

These past few days I’ve been doing some interesting illustrations for Good Old Boat magazine. Graphite and watercolor, not what I normally do – and that made it all the more fun. Author John Vigor provided an interesting article about sailboat cruising and the birds he’s seen from Western Canada to the South Atlantic and beyond. I know, it’s a fairly broad subject, eh? I was given a pretty broad list of choices to illustrate, so I picked the most interesting birds to me. Above are a pair of tufted puffins, local guys for sure – in fact, this pair could be within five miles of our place.

Next on the list was this little guy:

This is a St. Helena wirebird. St. Helena, if you remember, is in the southern Atlantic and is one of the most remote places on the planet. It’s where they put Napoleon after they named an ice cream for him – and maybe also because he started a war (George, the house is now vacant). The wirebird is the island’s only surviving endemic bird, and having never painted it, I just had to do some research (which is the real fun part of this stuff) and try it out. It’s a killdeer-like plover that does a broken wing act just like our local birds here.

There were more, but you’ll have to wait for the May issue to see them – which I’ll post here if I can remember. It was a most interesting project, for no other reason than in one day I got to paint birds from opposite ends of the planet.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s website is currently down while we remodel it. Stay tuned.

New Painting Post

Happy Solstice from Larry, Nancy – and Virginia

Here’s a little solstice story to read while you’re awaiting the big eclipse tonight. If you miss it or it’s cloudy, there’s another one in 2094.

Each Christmas between about 1940 until her death in 1966, my mom, Virginia, would hand-paint Christmas cards. A lucky hundred people would received these little watercolor and ink gems with her poetry inside. Each was slightly different, each a gift from someone who really couldn’t spare a moment of her short life. Books and articles waited, speaking engagements waited, her family waited – buying MY Christmas goodies waited – while she lined the cards up in rows on her painting table. I did the same thing too, until a few decades ago I realized I just couldn’t paint 100 of the same anything.

I occasionally hear from someone who still has a few of these – the most ancient would now be 70 years old. Sometimes they’re framed and hanging like a real painting – which, of course, they are. I think she would be amazed at that, because, for Virginia, they were just little Christmas expressions of her love for nature and her friends. For me, they’ve always been an example of how to be an artist. Here’s a link to a few more of her cards.

And here’s one of the verses, our Winter Solstice message for you.

How shall I wish you strength?
A trees says “strength” so silently.
How shall I wish you joy?
A bird sings joy and needs no words.
How shall I wish you peace,
When snow breathes peace so perfectly?
Yet these are the gifts I wish to you
At Christmas time.
And in the year to come.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry and Nancy Cherry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post

Big Ink – Big Deer

 We’ve been getting around. Bishop last week, this week it’s finishing up some art for Mt. Diablo State Park in California. This is one of eight for a wall collage for the historic WPA visitor center high atop the mountain. I did a bunch of art here over a decade ago, which is now completely worn out, so here I go again. Thanks, Karen, for believing I should continue (and even expand on) this legacy for another couple of decades. Last time around, I did the ink sketches, then hand-painted the outside illustrations using airplane model paint. It lasted better than a decade, and if it weren’t for the ADA requirements forcing new exhibits, I think they’d have lasted another few years. This time it’s a bit more modern in its presentation and technology.

As I said, this deer image is one of a group, and it’s not a small painting either – 24″ square. Ink and watercolor at large size takes some time to create. There are about a million lines here, and it’s not for the faint at heart to create, that’s for sure. One slip and it’s in the trash! But if I’ve learned one thing in 40+ years of doing this stuff it’s that good craftsmanship takes time. Lots of time. And today there seems to be a real lack of understanding this. Everyone seems to love reaching the finish line, but no one like getting to it.

Well, I like getting there more than finishing. I like the process.

Thanks for reading about my stuff this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Red Alders – Lots of Details

I really liked these trees, and they were right there in the campground, so, of course the paints came out of their box. Red alder is a tree that likes streamsides and damp areas and many times they’ll come in after logging until young conifers take over – like they did here. I think they’re very beautiful trees, with various and interesting bark patterns any painter of nature would find interesting. Red alders don’t live very long – they’re old at 50 – and those rare older ones become very gnarly and shapely, bruised and battered by winter storms.

I tend to get lost in the details, so after this initial sketch was drawn, I turned the chair around so I could paint them in my mind’s eye (with considerably less detail).  There are other alder species here in the West – white alder, Sitka, mountain, speckled and several more, but red alder always have leaves that curl under just slightly along the edges.

This mixed media painting is watercolor and ink on paper, 9″ x 12″ and $125 unframed.
A dark mahogany frame with a double mat makes it a total of $150 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

New Publications for Capitol Reef National Park

About ten years ago, Nancy and I did two publications for Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park, and they were both illustrated throughout with lots of my ink drawings. They looked good, but this time around, we upgraded it all with watercolor and ink sketches, and if you’ve been reading my blogs, you’ll know why. I was just in the mood to do more of these colorful images, so the wonderful folks at Cap Reef let me do it. One is about Cathedral Valley (above), the big road loop north of the visitor center, and the other is for the Waterpocket Fold loop, that famous road that loops down into the Staircase-Escalante and up the Burr Trail. They’re both wild rides, and very exciting to to drive – true American West stuff. Here’s a page from the second guide. The images should enlarge with a click. I think there are about 40 of these little watercolors scattered throughout.

But there’s a little more to this story.When Nancy and I were down there a decade ago researching this, we had just been officially married, and the wonderful folks at the park put us up in a little honeymoon cabin complete with a gift basket (and where you’d even get a gift basket in that very remote park of Utah, I still don’t know). We had Nancy’s almost-new BLACK 4-runner (black is so great for desert off-road driving, isn’t it?), and the very first day of research, and the very first few feet of the Cathedral Valley road, we were required to ‘ford’ the 100′-wide Fremont River. We could see the road going into it, and see it coming out the other side – so what the heck, we went for it. Water OVER THE HOOD – and by the time we reached the far shore, we had it coming in the doors too. It was a ‘family’ moment for sure, but we all got calmed down and continued the 60-mile heavily rutted dirt road in somewhat strained but  peaceful silence. After 60 miles, the car was NOT black, but more a muddy brown. Oh, and amazingly, we’re still married.

Thanks, Shirley and Diana -the Elegant CapReef Ladies, for letting me whack away at this.

And, thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Backwater on the Hoh

We’ve spent the better part of two weeks camping along Olympic National Park’s Hoh River, and I have a bunch of fun mixed media paintings to report. We’re home now, watering some very thirsty tomatoes, yanking out the gone-to-seed stuff we forgot about – and trying to figure out how to return to the West End for a few days more. Probably won’t happen soon, because there are some very patient people waiting for us to do our art-tricks – and we thank you. What? This little watercolor and ink created on my lap in the camp chair while I was being eaten alive by the moskies isn’t art-trick enough? Well, the spash of paint followed up by a dead run to the camper was a pretty good trick. “Moskies” was what I heard a Brit call the evil Hoh River mosquitoes. Pretty good name.

This ORIGINAL painting is watercolor and ink on paper , 8″ x 10″ and $140 unframed.
The dark mahogany frame with a double mat and glass makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details if you’re interested.

AND……………..

 

Here’s a friend that came by the campsite to visit one evening. We’ve not seen such a perfect bull elk  up close and personal in years. Had to have been 1200 lbs and not a mark on him. I guessed from ground to antler top was at least 8.5 feet, and you sure didn’t want to stand in his way as he came past. At the closest point he was about 15′ from us, and the tree I was hiding behind seemed pretty darned small. Olympic NP has the largest unmanaged elk herd in the country, and this guy truly seemed ‘unmanaged.’ Whooie.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Twilight on the Hoh River

We’ve been camping along Olympic National Park’s famous Hoh River this past week, and the next few  posts will be watercolors I did out there, mostly after hikes in the late afternoon. I could have spent the time soaking my feet in the 49-degree water coming straight off the Blue Glacier, but thought better of it. It’s an amazing valley, that quintessential Rain Forest Experience, surrounded by miles of giant 250′ Sitka spruce, red-cedar and hemlock. The visitors are all pretty civilized there too. It’s as if they realize they’re in a special, almost sacred place, and treat it (and other visitors) that way. There’s a lack of amenities, to be sure, no water in the restrooms, no power, no showers, and the park store seems to always be out of our puzzles and books – but it’s also pure clean ancient forest an hour drive from the nearest stoplight. Wonderful.

And speaking of the nearest stoplight, that would be in Forks – the little bedraggled West End logging town that has fallen into a Hollywood gold mine. They should make Stephenie Meyers, or maybe Hollywood location people, the patron saints of Forks for their gift of filming the Twilight Series there. We delight driving through it nowadays, seeing every store in business and the town full of vampire-seekers (or maybe vampires themselves). I’ve never seen so many dark haired, pale makeuped teenaged girls with cameras in my life. Stores: there’s ‘Dazzled by Twilight’, and ‘Twilight Natives’, and even ‘Twilight Firewood.’ We saw a rows of girls all lined up in front of the closed-up high school, pulled over waiting their turn in front of the town sign, even photographing the Twilight Gas Station sign. Amazing!

So, here’s my Twilight take on it with this little watercolor of the Twilight on the Hoh River. Nancy says I’m trying to cash in on the Twilight Craze, but I know who has all the money – pale-skinned teenage girls, and I just know one of them will buy this. Oh, no vampires in it? Well, you never know. There could be one lerking behind one of those big spruce.

This watercolor and ink painting is on cold-press paper, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
A nice mahogany frame with a double mat and glass makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

Next time I’ll tell you about the “One Square Inch of Silence” 3.5 miles up the trail on the Hoh.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Otter Tracks

River Otter Tracks on the Beach are a fairly common sight around here. In fact, otters are, themselves, a really common sight right in downtown Port Townsend. Recently, there’s been a big one down there on Water Street, dodging cars, running around and looking in the open door at Gallery Nine (where both Nancy and I exhibit) – and causing all sorts of photo-opportunities for the tourists who all think they’re just wonderful. Yeah, well …

There used to be a restaurant in PoTown (my word – and Nancy thinks it might be pronounced PooTown) called The Otter Crossing, with a whole little band of otters-guys that consistently hung out underneath the building. Recently it changed hands and is now renamed something fruity and upscale. Wonder if the otters know? Wonder if the new people who bought it knew what the name meant? I walked by there recently and a stong fishy aroma was still wafting around the place, but maybe it was just low tide. Otters can be over four feet long – meaning, to put it mildly, a lot of seafood goes through them.

I’ve painted otters before, paying homage to them so they wouldn’t come aboard our boat and make a big gooey mess, but it didn’t help, didn’t deter them in the slightest. Some boaters hang little bags of weird coyote urine on their lifelines, others sneak go down at night and use their own urine here and there, still others pay huge sums of money on otter-proof netting that never really works. Sheesh. To me, they’re just part of living with nature around here, and, as we say fairly often, sometimes it isn’t easy.

Now, don’t get me going on the red squirrel babies in the attic.

This painting is watercolor and ink on watercolor paper, 7 1/2″ x 10 1/2″ and is $139 unframed.
A nice mahogany frame with a double mat, outside measurements of about 13″ x 15″  makes it a total of $179 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the website link for the new bristlecone pine. It’s been pretty popular all ready.

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Clickhere to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography. There are some nice images of our recent Glacier and Waterton National Parks visit a couple of weeks ago.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Hale’iwa Cottage

Back in March we stayed on Oahu’s North Shore, and now I’ve gotten around to painting a little  “thank you” watercolor for the family who graciously allowed us to stay there. The house is an interesting place, and so I thought I’d post it here. The place is about 3 miles or so north of Hale’iwa, that North Shore wide place in the road that’s famous for the shave ice, odd people and giant surfing waves. How big are the waves? Well, right down the road a local surfer was sleeping in his beach-side cabin when a rogue wave came in, smacked the place apart and he awoke to find himself behind his home, surfing up the hill on his bed. He’s lucky to tell the tale.

This little cottage, also oh-so-close to the giant waves, had its lower front windows boarded up because of the same problem. Try sleeping soundly at night with THAT knowledge running around in your head. We were told the place was originally an old WW2 army barracks that was moved here after the war, then remodeled endless times to become a truly old-Hawaii experience. This means it’s a mixture of everything that’s available yet nothing that’s entirely permanent. Nothing fancy, no granite countertops, just a tidy little place like the summer cabins I stayed in as a kid. There’s a long sand beach just down the block where green sea turtles haul out to rest, but the ‘beach’ out front is mostly lava rocks and remnants of an ancient coral reef when sea levels were a bit higher.

For the most part, the entire 808-State (Hawaii area code) isn’t like this anymore. You have to really look for the old Hawaii Nancy and I love – but it’s still here in bits and pieces. The family who remains true to this small and simple old place on the beach is pretty savy, I think, of realizing how to enjoy life.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Here’s a link to our new Bristlecone Pine jigsaw puzzle.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography. New images from her Glacier National Park trip are featured. Bears, peaks, loons and foxes, oh my.