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This is another panel for my project at the Admiralty Inlet Natural Area Preserve on Whidbey Island with the Land Trust. While all the rest of these outdoor wayside installations are about nature, this one speaks of Fort Casey, the reason this pristine place still exists in the first place. Without the fort and this history, the Land Trust would surely have had nothing to restore, preserve and protect, and I would have nothing to paint – because it would have long-since been made into mansions owned by Microsoft guys and lawns that look like carpet.

So, how to go about this painting this story using art? I changed up the realistic style to something a bit more ‘loose’ and tried to focus on the human side of a fort that had huge guns that protected the seaward approach to Puget Sound (it was never fired upon and became obsolete in a decade). Mark at the Land Trust, with help from Steven who appears to just love this stuff, found a very appealing photo of three guys enjoying themselves right outside their workplace at the fort – the Fire Station where they triangulated the gun’s shots. They lived here, and the building they’re standing in front of is the location where this outdoor wayside panel will live, and is right on the cliff’s edge. The building is gone, but the foundation remains as a point of reference.

While the other panels are all acrylic on board, for this I used acrylic wash and pencil for the illustrations, pumping up the color so the pencil looks more like ink. I think it has a nice textural quality. I kept this somewhat loose, making the reality of giant machines of war hopefully  seem a bit more palatable. I hope I succeeded.

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.