We’ve been away for two weeks, so no posts for awhile. We were in Hilo Hawaii, better known as Hi-Town, enjoying sea turtles, Coqui frogs, volcanoes and the most interesting blend of people, music and art we’ve seen in awhile. The Big Island has turned into quite some place.

Meanwhile, the summer visitors are a’comin, and this year’s Olympic National Park’s Bugler cover is a painting I recently finished of the Sol Duc Valley for Olympic National Park, northwest of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. It was commissioned for a roadside wayside exhibit, but these paintings often end up doing double duty. Now, I’m pleased to say that, for the second year in a row, the park has used my work on the cover of the park’s summer newspaper (that’s the giveaway publication you often get at most national park’s gate or visitor centers). I heard that the initial spring printing was about 100,000 copies.

Of course there’s a back story:
Here’s one of the many Sol Duc River reference photos I took to get the painting going.

And here’s the draft sketch for this painting. You can see the exhibit text blocks that will eventually overlay the painting, which never makes it easy for the painter. I have to not only create a good painting that might be used for, say, the Bugler cover, but also allow areas for text when it’s used for a roadside exhibit. After decades of doing this, I guess it’s just all in a day’s work – but I continue to be very interested in the serious challenge of making it all work up into a good artistic work of art and not just a photo-like exhibit. Some work better than others.

If you’re interested in more of the interpretive art I’ve completed, click here to see lots of other national and state park art on our website.

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Thanks for reading this post.
Larry Eifert

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