Tag Archives: Yellowstone National Park

Crater Lake Institute

Second large painting for Crater Lake Institute of the lake, 2010. It features whitebark pines, an endangered tree most know as beautiful and iconic to this place.

Just an update about a side project of mine. Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park has held a fascination for me for a very long time. I first came over the Rim in the early 1970’s and saw that stunning view of the lake – and have returned many times since. Then in 1998 Nancy and I  produced a nature guide of the park and I got the chance to get to know the place on a deeper level. There’s a simple clean beauty here that stays with me. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean!

Then in 2016, I became the website guy for Crater Lake Institute, a group dedicated to the back story of the park. With decades of collective history, these guys had a website that needed help, and I had the skills to fix it.  Today, CLI averages almost a million hits a month in summer, has 5000 images and 4000 pages of anything you’d ever want to know about the park. It’s a handful to maintain, I’m telling you, but it’s also taught me a lot about the place. We’ve partnered with REI’s hiking Hiking Project to share our trail knowledge and we hear the park staff regularly stops in to find stuff. It’s been a fun project.

Commissioned Paintings
Below are some other paintings commissioned by Crater Lake Institute and their president, Ron Mastrogiuseppe. All these feature stressed environments caused by human interference. All enlarge with a click.

Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Hot Springs
Electric Peak in Yellowstone with a stand of Whitebark Pines in trouble.
Whitebark Pines in the Rocky Mountains

Check out the website when you have a few minutes. You’ll want to visit, I just know it.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New – Canvas Prints from Murals

Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Hot Springs

I’ve been getting many requests for one-off prints of my larger paintings. Call us disorganized, I guess, but we emptied the lock box of about 100 transparencies and digital scans, and now I  have  a new section on the website for giclee prints of paintings. Many of these can be printed wall-sized, I mean 7 to 10 feet wide, but most requests I get are more in the 3 to 4 feet size. So, if you want to see what I have up here so far, check out the ever-expanding list. Hopefully I’ll have around 100  or more when I’m finished. Some haven’t been seen in decades (I haven’t even seen them in decades either, and some are really pretty good).

Here’s another that was painted for The Nature Conservancy at Great Salt Lake. The original art is in their visitor center there, but few have seen it. It would make a pretty good canvas print, don’t you think.

Again, here’s the link to the current list.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

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 stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Grand Prismatic Hotspring – Yellowstone progress

Hot-Springs-4

There’s progress on the current painting, Christmas festivities or not. We had a cold spell – at least cold for Northwestern Washington and it got down into the 20’s, even high teens at night. For the first time ever, Nancy told me to move the easel and painting stuff into the house where it’s a bit more climate-controlled. Nice! Now it’s back to normal temps, but I’m still here, painting right beside one of the big east-facing windows and not really wanting to go back to the studio yet. So, here’s the progress in a week, and considering Christmas and all, I think it’s going well. Should be finished by next week.

 

This is last week: I blogged about it here.

 

Progress-2

And here’s the sketch a few weeks before:

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

AND, right out side the window next to where I’m painting, our neighborhood barred owl hangs out during the day. He waits patiently for one of the squirrels or towhees to make a wrong move, but so far, SO FAR, we’ve not seen him get anything. Nancy went out with her camera and got within about 15 feet when he regurgitated a big owl pellet – so he must be catching something. Either way, I’ve been greatly enjoying this closeness to nature – as I paint nature. He stares at me like he knows how to do this Yellowstone-thing better. Maybe he does! (photo by Nancy Cherry Eifert)

Backyard bared owl

Thanks for reading this week. This may be the last post for 2013 and we both just want to thank you for all the support everyone’s given us this time around the sun. This year makes it something like the 45th year I’ve made a living by making art about nature.
Larry and Nancy Cherry 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.

Yellowstone Lodgepole Forests in Peril

Progress-2

A second Yellowstone Climate Change painting is evolving on my easel now. The last mural a few weeks ago was about the high elevation whitebark pine forests there and the mass die-off that threatens an entire ecosystem. This one is about the lodgepole pine forests and how Climate Change is threatening that natural community. The center of interest is the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, biggest hot spring in America. How will Climate Change effect this? Low water levels in summer may possibly turn it into a giant dry brown hole. Broken, burned and dead lodgepole pine forests are happening everywhere in the West, but the giant fires a few years ago in Yellowstone showed something was seriously amiss. As Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior stated: “The entire West is one giant tinderbox waiting to go off!” So, I’m trying to show all this with art. Not easy, but definitely worthwhile if I can pull it off.

Progress-1

And here’s the initial laying in of the concept with paint. Distant background is beginning to take shape.

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

And here’s the original sketch. I blogged about it before here.

Next week, Christmas or not, I’ll be closing in on finishing (I hope). Happy Holidays to everyone and thanks for helping two artists make a living at what they both love. It wasn’t the best year for us, thanks to the Sequester and Shutdown, but we’re still alive and kicking – and looking forward to a better one coming up.

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.

Yellowstone Whitebarks – Closing In

Progress-5

I’m closing in on completion of this current project, Whitebark Pines of Yellowstone. You can see the progress over the past few weeks here in other posts. Hey, this painting has it all: charismatic mega fauna including that emblem of Yellowstone, the griz, giant mountains, hot springs, wolverine, elk, wolves and even a lynx. All those I rarely get to plop into one painting, so it’s been a treat. Still working on the grouse, aspens and a bunch of details, so stay tuned for the next round within a week (because I have another one charging right behind).

    As I wrote before, this painting is supposed to illustrate the Climate Change disaster that’s occurring in Yellowstone. Bark beetles, blister rust, warmer winters with less snow, drier summers and lots of other factors are creating real havoc in this amazing place. Most of the critters and trees in this painting will probably end up missing from this great park – and I’m not at all happy to say it was us, all of us, that did this.

    But for now, I’ll finish the painting right after I go get some gas for the car.

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.

Progress on the Yellowstone Project

Yellowstone Progress 4

    Several of you asked to see progress photos of this project. So, let’s try it.

And here’s the progress over the past few days. I’ll put the most current at the top. For me, acrylic landscape painting is a back-to-front process, meaning I tend to paint the horizon first, then work my way to the foreground. It creates a cleaner painting situation for these larger images, but this painting is actually fairly small for me, about four feet on the horizontal – just big enough to get some serious detail, yet small enough to lug around.

Progress-2

    I often paint some section out fairly completely to see how it’s going to look, like this area near the bear. THE BEAR: notice it’s on all fours here, and at the top it’s standing. I might go back to this one – just not sure yet. It seems to be going much slower than usual, but there’s been lots of other stuff going on here. Might be a good thing as I’ve always been yelled at for being too quick to completely think these complex projects out.

Progress1

Here’s the original sketch I posted first on October 10th.

Whitebark-Sketch-vs2

It’s a complex painting, but the type I really relish. I just love standing here with my paint brush and imagining this scene is real, that I’m really here in the meadow looking at all that’s going on. I dream about it.

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.

Yellowstone Climate Change mural #2

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

This enlarges in your browser so you can see details.

Midway Geyser Basin and the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, Yellowstone National Park

This is a second and very different sketch than the one posted two weeks ago.

    There are still critters to add, bison crossing near the hot spring, a few birds and maybe a bat, but it’s essentially complete. The idea for this one developed as a visual counter-punch to the first sketch I drew two weeks ago of Whitebark Pines at Yellowstone. That one shows high-elevation Climate Change effects to the park, while this sketch shows thermal features and lodgepole pine forests (where most visitors go).  Both show all the critters and plants that will be effected by Climate Change, change that is already seriously in progress.

    Below is one of my reference photos of the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, largest hot spring in America. The sketch shows a burned-out forest and lots of diseased trees caused by warmer winters. Warmer winters allow pine bark beetles and then blister rust to ravage these forests. Warmer and drier summers then mean bigger wild fires, a possible lowering of the summer water table – and many changes in wildlife populations. Stay tuned, the first painting is already underway. These two are funded by the Crater Lake Institute, but more like them are being planned through the National Park Service Climate Change Response Program. It’s a bold series of paintings I’m thrilled to be involved with.

Grand_Prismatic_Spring_and_Midway_Geyser_Basin_Yellowstone_NP

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.

Yellowstone – Whitebark Pines Ecosystem Mural

Whitebark-Sketch-vs2

Click on the image and it’ll enlarge in your browser for better viewing – and this one deserves it!

A new project is in the works – funded by the Crater Lake Institute. Here’s the sketch awaiting comments and maybe a few changes, but I can already see it’ll be a grand painting. And this is one of two large murals I’m working on at once. I’ll have the second sketch for you next week (I hope, if my fingers don’t give out). They’re both about Climate Change and the Yellowstone area.

    This is a ecosystem in great peril, thanks to us: Climate Change is causing mountain pine beetles to over-live usually colder winters. Then there’s an introduced fungus called white pine blister rust that is believed to be native to Asia or Europe and was subsequently introduced to North America by us – and put the three together and you have the recipe for real disaster. Thousands upon thousands of these important trees are either dying or are already standing stark and ghostly against the Yellowstone sky, ghost forests – and most of the critters represented in the sketch rely on this tree for survival, for food, shelter and their way of life.

Wally Macfarlane

YES: those are dead trees! Photo from University of Utah researcher Wally Macfarlane. 

    So, the sketch: The big background peak was patterned after Electric Peak along the northern border of Yellowstone, and will show fresh fall snow – but snow is a factor in this story too. Warmer winters mean less summer ground water, and the elk birth rates are already declining there because of the lack of proper summer grass to produce milk for their young. Below the peak, the whitebark pine forests show as dying or dead with brown-red needles by the millions. A back-country hot springs to the right of the grizzly places it over the Yellowstone Caldera. Aspen are in full fall yellow on the far right side, another species in danger. Aspen are important because they are one of the few hardwoods growing here, but they need summer water to survive – oops, that too is declining. I could go on, but you get the ‘picture’.

    Art should stimulate discussion, and that’s what this is all about. I’m excited to be a part of it. Global Climate Change is the single most important threat to our well-being – as well as the health of all the creatures and plants we are now responsible for. It wasn’t this way before humans learned to alter the planet they live on, but now it’s up to us to make sure they have a place to live. Onward – I say to my painting arm. What else could matter more?

Thanks for reading this week. Stay tuned for the painting!

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.