Old Fir at Fort Flagler

I’m still on this pen, ink with watercolor-thing. I recently received an email about one of these I did back in the 1970’s that someone recently purchased in an estate sale, and it jogged my memory that they were fun to do. So, we’ll go a bit more with this.

We trailer-camped beside this stately old Douglas-fir last week. We had planned on a little camp-hike into the Olympics, but rain got in the way (oh, RAIN? in the Olympics – in JUNE?), so we simply drove over to Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island just east of here. The Rain Shadow Effect was doing its thing, and the sun was out. We could see the rain right over across Port Townsend Bay, where it stayed, but here it was clear, soft and nice, so I got busy with the paints. Long  cool later afternoon shadows, tall spring grass that hadn’t been trimmed and a few crows flying overhead.

There are lots of old-growth trees here, but here in the lee of giant mountains, they never grew huge. You can tell they’re old trees because the lowest 8 feet or so are all fire scarred and pocked with woodpecker holes. A dead giveaway. And the reason they’re still here? This is old fort was one of the many ringing Point Wilson, gateway to Puget Sound, and they guarded it from the bad guys a century ago. The forts never fired a shot in defence, but they never cut many of the trees either, preferring to use them as camouflage for the big guns. The guns were melted down and turned into tanks in the next war, and the state of Washington turned the forts into parks. A great idea, don’t you think?

This ORIGINAL painting is watercolor and ink on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ that fits a 16″ x 20″ matted frame. It’s $239 unframed.
A dark mahogany frame with a double mat makes it a total of $279 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.

Next post I’ll have the new Bristlecone Pine jigsaw puzzle to brag about, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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