Tag Archives: Trails

Passing Moment – Soon Gone

Heather-Creek-Feeder-Stream

Our little trail went right by this seasonal creek carrying runoff from snow much farther up the mountain – Buckhorn Peak. I loved the way the trail, carrying us, mimicked the creek, carry the water. Both of us were traveling, both right here at the same moment in time and together by chance. One of us appreciated the light and lush effects it produced with light streaming through the forest and onto the water. In a moment, all three were gone.

 

Heather Creek is up the Dungeness River, Olympic National Forest and National Park, second steepest watershed in America. In its 32 miles, the river drops 7,300 feet. I can say I’ve been from bottom to top of this river – it’s one of my favorites. From old-growth hemlock forests lacking fire scars to a waterfall that looks like a feathery curtain, broad meadows, alpine tarns, towering peaks named Deception, Buckhorn and Constance – it’s all here. I’ve painted it often, and if I can walk, I’ll be back!

Heather-Creek-Feeder-Stream-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Up The Hill

Up-the-Hill

This little acrylic was painted a month ago and I was holding it for a friend who appears to not want it now – so here it is on my blog ready for a new home. I painted several studies of this hillside road close to us, but this one became a trail. To me, the white at the top of the grade makes the center of interest work well – like a light bulb enticing you “up the hill.” This is the nice thing about painting over photography, but I’d never say that to Nancy (who spends a lot of energy looking for photographic images that look like paintings).

 Sorry, it’s now sold.

Since Solstice and the new year are almost here, I just want to thank everyone for the amazing support I’ve gotten on my blog-thing. I posted my 250th post last week, and of these 36 new small paintings I’ve recently finished, only a few are left in the studio. Feels good. Thanks, everyone. I wouldn’t have imagined it, but this is becoming a very personal way to sell my stuff. Each sale seems to have an email-back-and-forth that lets me get to know who’s buying it – a very different experience from the typical gallery sale where I usually don’t even know the name of the buyer because it might breech some client/gallery confidence. And at this stage of my life, ‘personal’ is becoming more and more important to Nancy and I. Making a living as a painter is more than just making money.

Up-the-Hill-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside measurements are about 12″ x 15″. The custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

That Golden Sunset Hike

Sunset-Hike

On a late afternoon hike not long ago,  I clearly remember this place, open scattered meadows, a golden-red sun streaming in from the left and lighting up things as if they were internally electrified. Trees seemed to be somewhat blurred as the light bounced around, making it feel almost like a sunlight-fog. I  wanted to walk here forever, but the bugs were getting intense the farther I went. Can you guys tell I’m a hiker? I mean, without hiking I can feel myself starting to dry up emotionally. I truly believe doing it will keep me alive forever, and help keep me in such better health that old age won’t feel like old age. So far, it seems to be working, and helping me to keep painting too.

Sunset-Hike-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside measurements are about 12″ x 15″.
The custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Know someone who might appreciate my stuff? Send me an email and I’ll sign them up.

Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Royal Basin – Upper Meadows

Royal-Basin-Meadows

Just one more of my recent summer alpine series – please? I’m happy to say almost all of these current paintings are now sold. In August, I had most of a day to roam the meadows of this area, and it seems to have had a profound effect on what I want to paint – at least for now. Royal Basin, Olympic National Park: there were evidently seven individual glaciers that came into one as it flowed down this single valley, and each headwall has developed its own personality. This one had a huge view of the adjoining valley and peak, Mt Clark – and the views were stunning, so I developed a painting around this feeling of meadow-walking. I just want to somehow walk here again – and if it’s with a painting, so be it.

Royal-Basin-Meadows-framed

DETAILS:

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
The custom frame has a triple liner and glass (and actually, I think the frame is more pecan-colored in real life). Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.

AND: as I publish this, amazingly the painting on the last blog post is still available. I can put them both together and offer a discount – but all the other 10 recent small paintings are now sold. Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Barnes Creek Trail – Shadows

Barnes-Creek-Trail---Shadows

Sorry, this one is sold.

Barnes Creek Trail – Shadows. This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
The custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print. Also, I have several other frame styles if you so choose.
Email us for details.

Barnes-Creek-Trail-Shadows-framed

A little back story: A few weeks ago we hiked Barnes Creek Trail in Olympic National Park, the extension of the shorter Marymere Falls Trail. On the way back, we saw late afternoon sun streaming across the creek and lighting up this area – like a spotlight. I thought, “Oh, a painting.” About a zillion tourists take that shorter trail to the falls. “Make it?”, asked one more-than-hefty person in the parking lot when we came out. But forget that waterfall-stuff on the kid’s trail, if you go past the tourist trail sign to the falls, Barnes Creek Trail goes upslope for some miles, an almost forgotten bit of lovely. In a bit the trail passes over a ridge and then drops to a really wonderful bridge that I just have to show you. It’s built of two trees, downed just perfectly to span the 200′ across the water. Nice job – Park Service!

Barnes-Ck-bridge

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

The Way Trail

Obstruction_waytrail

Sorry, it’s sold.

Clicking either image should enlarge in your browser. 

It’s called “The Way Trail” because it’s not a normally-maintained path. The best trails are way trails, and it’s another from my alpine experiences this summer. That’s the Bailey Range in Olympic National Park, meadows around Obstruction Point and near the little lake we call “Lake Nancy” (since it’s not named on any map, we’re calling it this after you-know-who).  We were up there recently and watched the sky turn orange before sunset, which seemed to match the late-summer paintbrush still in bloom at our feet. It was a soft memory, the kind I love to paint.

Waytrail-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
I have other frames if you’d like and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.

And, I still have last week’s painting available and will give a discount if you buy both. See last week’s here. All the other eight I recently posted are sold – sorry.

Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Royal Basin – The Upper Trail

Royal-Basin-Upper-Trail

Sorry, it’s sold.

Another original painting in this current series of Olympic Mountain images. This has been an amazing summer of backpacking and day-hiking for us, and memories of some of it are reappearing in my studio. It’s been many years since we’ve been in the mountains so much, and we’re enjoying it as long as it lasts into the Fall. These paintings are like a fond memory, which, I think, makes for good art. They tell stories back to me of places I’ve found and love.

 

Past Royal Lake, ‘up the hill’ from where we live, the main trail goes upslope through an open, flower-studded forest before it reaches alpine meadows. It’s about 7 miles and 3500′ uphill from the trailhead, so it sure isn’t a day hike. I love this gentle area and wish I could return every time I think of it. Early morning, long shadows, hints of the jagged Needles on Gray Wolf Ridge in the background. For me, life doesn’t get any better than this. As I recently heard someone say, “There a LOT of God up there”.

Royal-Basin-Upper-Trail-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
The custom frame has a triple liner and glass, and if you want to swap this frame out of another, we can also do that. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Final Designs for the Whidbey Island Land Trust

Rare-Diverse-Forest

Not just a nice painting, but an entire outdoor art gallery! This wayside panel goes to ‘press’ this week, so here’s the final design. Forest path, old-growth forest on the cliff, windblown ancient trees and a complex ecosystem – all in one painting. Since the text talks of this forest, we put in eight smaller paintings of the local trees and shrubs, so the art becomes a nature guide. Click to enlarge in your browser.

This will be fabricated out of very thick high-pressure laminated ‘plastic’ resin and cardboard with a lifespan certainly longer than mine. An art gallery in the forest – just my idea of where art should be shown.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

A Rare and Diverse Forest – Whidbey Land Trust

Forest-ecology-sketch

A click will enlarge this in your browser. 

This is the second painting for the Whidbey Camano Land Trust project at the Admiralty Inlet Natural Area Preserve just a few miles north of Port Townsend. Missed the first painting? Click here. This time it’s less about the critters and more about showing this rare and diverse forest, a remnant lowland bit of old-growth hugging a bluff-top. This place gets the full unfettered west wind coming right down the Straits, so the trees on the edge are wildly “flagged” from centuries of being blasted by the Westerlies. Eagles and hawks patrol this bluff edge, riding these updrafts that also increase the wind’s velocity. Weeesheeeh, can you hear it?  Then there’s the trail snaking along, a left-over from when this was part of Fort Casey where they watched and waited for an enemy that never showed up. Farther inland, the trees are huge and less flagged, but still very gnarly. In fact, they have some of the gnarliest branches I’ve seen around Puget Sound. They’re trees you’d expect on the western beaches at Kalaloch or La Push instead of here, 100 miles to the east. Trees and wind, trees and wind. It’s a fun painting for me so far.

Rare-1

And here’s my progress so far. An old friend wrote last week to say he thought when my larger paintings reach this stage, it  was about as good as it gets – free and dramatic, non-objective nirvana. I completely agree. It’s not that the finished paintings are less good, just a different good. I could end it here, show it in some gallery for a month and maybe it’d be hung in some rich-guys house. But if I continue to paint it, thousands upon thousands will see it for decades to come – so I paint on.

Rare-2

Here’s some structure appearing – blocking out trees and distant horizon, the Olympic Peninsula in the distance.

Rare-3

And now the trail is defined, some parts are refined a bit so I can judge how it’s going to come together. Background horizon is finished enough that I can understand how much atmosphere there might be to make it appear distant. Painters out there: see how light that is! Just saying. Stay tuned, because given some time, by next week this should be well along – oh, but then there’s the magazine page I have to write, a new puzzle that needs proofing, a web site to build for Crater Lake Institute – and a spring to enjoy.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Admiralty Inlet Natural Area Preserve – Forest Wildlife mural

Forest-Wildlife

Click the image and it will enlarge in your browser.

Feeling pretty good about this painting, and that’s saying something for me (who’s usually a real curmudgeon about my own stuff). With several more paintings right behind this one, I didn’t hesitate to finish it up this week. Some details need to be refined, a couple of  minor changes I can already see, but we’re close – very close.

This is all about wildlife in the forest, so I designed it to show the actual trail meandering down and around the viewer. It’s as if YOU were back in the woods with all the critters, watching hikers come and go, come and go. The coyote shares the trail with people as I often see them doing (they can cover a lot of ground that way), a Douglas squirrel shucks a Douglas-fir cone, a chickadee lands on an old uprooted snag. I enjoy piecing this together, one critter at a time, and hopefully in the end it all makes sense. The critters should all be sized relative to each other, spaced in such ways that might really be true. I still need to alter the rose color, fix the shine on the squirrel, a couple of other things – and, well, what do you know, just this moment I realized I forgot the deer mouse in the old stump. Back to the easel! Next time you see this painting, look for it.

And here’s the sketch again, finished just 13 days ago. I’m telling you, I’m on fire! Can you see the deer mouse?

Forest-animals-sketch

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.