All posts by Brush Man

With more art in America's National Parks than any other artist.
New Painting Post

Wet Winter Road

A new easel painting appeared between a couple of larger park projects. I continue to happily paint all these big public art pieces but it helps to create a bit of of whimsy on a smaller, looser scale. So, here’s a happy little place, at least for me. 

This painting is already sold, sorry. Just a show-and-tell here.

This painting was a collaboration with Nancy. We’ve never done this before, even after 25 years of working together on giant walls and making a living selling our individual efforts. We painted this together, each of us doing some, then the other moving forward and fixing the other’s deadends. I think it resulted in a refined and well thought-out painting. We might even try it again. Maybe next time I can get her to sign her name.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about color values and painting low winter light. It’s far more interesting than painting anything in summer – absolutely anything. It takes some time and thought to keep the image slanted over into a monochrome pallet of similar values, mix each with a bit of all the rest, and save the center-of-interest for the only intense place to blast away with slightly more color.

There are lots of layers in this painting, as you can see, but they’re all on a level of dullness to not get excited about. The road beckons the viewer to join us in a walk up the road, dodging puddles, to discover what’s just over the ridge.

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

Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

El Malpais mural

El Malpais National Monument mural painting completed

I finished my El Malpais National Monument mural a few days ago. Of course they don’t know about it yet because the park staff is shutdown, but I thought I’d post it here to let everyone else know that artists don’t get sent home – we ARE home. Park staff isn’t getting paid, and neither am I.

Enough of that! The progressive steps of this painting are shown below, from the concept sketch created on location in Grants New Mexico, to the refined sketch and finally the painted version on top. Scroll to the bottom to see the chronological progression in reverse. 

This painting shows the rather amazing and pristine high desert plateau landscape right on the Continental Divide in central New Mexico. This giant park has over 400 lava caves, ancient pueblo ruins, sandstone cliffs, vast lava flows, cinder cones and some of the oldest Douglas-fir trees on the planet. The painting shows most of these components, and also several cave entrances, bats emerging for the evening, a ringtail watching them pass. There are two tinajas, or waterpockets with frogs and others coming to drink after a hot day in the desert. This part is on sandstone, like the background cliffs. There are ancient junipers that were probably here 1000 years ago when the pueblo was occupied, and lots of pot shards are littering the ground. We saw all this, and much more I couldn’t get in while on our site visit last spring. 

The design for the park’s map brochure.

This painting will be going to the main visitor center in Grants, but a larger copy with also be produced for an exhibit there. The real reason for this, however, is that it’s going on the back of the new park map brochure, so each year over 100,000 people get to take it home with them – along with this painting of mine. This part of the project is being produced by the excellent staff at the National Park Service’s Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia. They always do great things with my paintings. I know the production will be top-notch.

Super-refined sketch prior to painting. This one was drawn in the studio here in Port Townsend and was the final draft before painting.
Refined sketch number seven, also drawn on location.
ELMA sketch #7

Above is the initial sketch photographed for big screen presentation at the park. I did this on the pavement at the hotel in Grants New Mexico, then loaded into my laptop and piped it onto the big screen for the park to see and comment on while I listened and wrote comments. This is sketch #7, the final one attempted and it was heartily approved. Even the superintendent was there, which is a rarity for me.

This was drawn on location, along with half a dozen others, but wasn’t a specific place. It has all the ‘elements of El Malpais, but doesn’t hold faithful to any ‘stand here and see this’ location. I think I nailed it pretty well.

El Malpais means Badlands – they sure are.

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

New Painting Post

Ginkgo Petrified Forest

Gingko Petrified Forest Museum

Earlier this year I completed a bunch of paintings for Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park near the Columbia River east of Seattle. In many ways, the project took me back to my kid-life when both my parents worked for the Illinois State Museum. I remember being with them and finding ginkgo leaf fossils in northern Illinois, and now here I was painting them for exhibits in a very old and remote museum in Washington State. This building was built by the CCCs in the late 1930s and is just a very beautiful and classic example of those epic times. With the place closed when we were there, the only sounds we heard out on these ash slopes were the wind through to trees and crunch of our footsteps on the trails. The ginkgo and other tree fossils are big, like full-grown old-growth. You can even count the rings showing how old they were when the volcano buried them.

New Front Door – Gingko Petrified Forest State Park
Gingko Petrified Forest State Park
Gingko Petrified Forest State Park – complicated maps turned out pretty well.
All my paintings ringing the exhibit room.

These paintings tell a super-complicated story of how this place came to be in its present state. Countless lava flows, mud flows, ash drops and Ice-Age floods involved trees from another time. They all were stuck in this mess and became fossilized. The trick, for me, was to figure out how to compress giant geologic events or Climate Change into smallish, understandable paintings. Some of these needed maps, some needed a few extra words of explanation, but somehow I think it all works. It was a fun project for me, different than what I normally paint.

All images enlarge with  a click. Not all the paintings are shown – thought I’d save you from too much geology.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter. This  year, especially, has been an amazing ride of art being created in public places.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post

Ozette Loop Trail

Ozette Loop Trail, a boardwalk journey into the green tunnel. Yes, I paint private commissions that interest me – and this one did.

This is a recent commission that traveled across the country. The lovely question: “My daughter and I came to the Northwest to visit family and we hiked the Ozette Loop. Could you paint something to help us remember our fantastic trip?” – or something like that. Anyway, I wanted to share the painting here because, while it certainly IS the Ozette Loop, as anyone who has hiked that world-class trail will agree, it’s actually what I THOUGHT that 6 MILES of boardwalk feels like. It just goes on and on through the green wall of ancient old-growth, cedar, spruce and alder. Sometimes it’s a hand-split cedar boardwalk, sometimes it’s new stuff, sometimes you think you’ll fall through and sometimes even plastic Trex appears momentarily (how COULD they have done that?).

Nancy Cherry Eifert paying attention. One wrong step and a busted knee at least.

There are places where this path is really old, like the section in the photo. You need to watch it carefully, not gaze around at the canopy overhead. It’s a leg-breaker awaiting. Sometimes it’s gravel, but not so much considering it’s 3 miles on each of two sides of the triangle. The middle side, of course, is 3 miles of wilderness beach, boulder and gravel walking down the coast – and the real reason most of us go there. That part feels amazingly remote but it’s really too good to share. It’s a place stories come from. It’s a place to camp, sit beside a beach fire and watch the sea otters play in the shallows. Maybe another hike’s in order next summer.

Thanks go to Jennifer and her family in Connecticut. I got to make a painting for you – and me.

All images enlarge with  a click. Yes, I paint commissions.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story

Tidepool Sculpin – My 48 North story for September 2018

Never got around to posting this in the midst of a bunch of much bigger paintings, but this was my September magazine page for 48 North magazine.  It’s late to post here, but I always want to leave a record of my stuff to keep track of it all.

Sculpins: a quick little color study of these tiny fish that live in rocky tidepools in the Northwest. There are many reasons to make these little guys (smaller than your thumb) featured here, but my favorite is the rather homebody lifestyle they have. Simply put, they like where they live and never stray far. Sure, they can live out of the water through an entire tidal change, and sure, they check out other pools as far away as a football field, but they always return home, and to the same pool!

Here’s a closeup of the little guy, loose pencil and watercolor. I don’t give myself much time on these and I like the process because it’s so very different than many of my bigger projects that are tight and detailed. Compare this with the 500 square feet of Hoh Rain Forest paintings I was doing at the same time I did this little sculpin and you can imagine the relief of starting and finishing something in the same session. Ahhh.

And here is the text that went with it in 48 North magazine:

Go ashore – poke around tidepools, and chances are good you’ll find this little sculpin. It might take a bit of looking, because their habit of secrecy means staying put, not moving a fin and waiting for you to pass by. Superbly camouflaged, these small 3.5” fish settle to the tide pool bottom and blend in so well with sand, crushed shells and bits of seaweed they just disappear. Put your hand over the water and, like a flash, they shoot forward to a safer place. It’s still the same tidepool, so just watch them flash, settle, and then have a good look. As the tide returns, sculpins could move about to other areas, but they have a home pool and rarely stray far. If moved, say 300 feet to another tidepool, they return to their original pool, not unlike salmon returning to spawn to their home stream.

There are five sculpin species here and all are carnivores, hunting small crustaceans and seaworms. In turn, they are hunted by all sorts of predators from herons to otters, so sharp spines that take the place of scales are protection as they live in a confined space with no escape. Sculpins occasionally get stranded out of water at low tide, beneath seaweed or under rock ledges. Not to worry. These fish can breathe air until the water returns a few hours later. Other fish can do this, too, and it begs the comparison to when fish crawled out of the water for good and took to the land in an evolutional move that eventually became us. Think about that next time you see one of these little fish. Is that you, grand dad?

This is the tidepool where I did much of the research for this story, Beach 4 at Olympic National Park. It’s one of our favorites for a low-tide poking around.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Waysides, Wildlife

Dismal Nitch – Chinook Salmon Story

I like this Chinook salmon painting but it’s going to change, so I thought I’d post it here so at least there’s a memory of it. What’s wrong with it, you ask, well, the National Park Service says it’s not fat enough! Welcome to MY life, and I guess I’d agree. They have some compelling reasons – so, back to the easel.


Here’s the entire fish. The final painting will go on one of seven waysides stands at the Dismal Nitch area beside the Columbia Estuary, part of Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. This is where ‘The Corps’, in 1804, spent a week hunkered down, starving, wet and miserable before a group of Chinook Indians paddled by and sold them some salmon. It’s a good story, and one I knew from my childhood when Virginia wrote a book about the wildlife and flora this bunch found and named, not to mention the Lewis River, Clark’s Fork and others. Now, here I am 50 years later painting exhibit art for the same place! The apples didn’t fall far from her tree, did they?

This painting of spawning salmon is one of over a dozen I’ve painted in the past couple of years, most for salmon restoration areas around the Salish Sea where I live. I’ve gotten much better at understanding these amazing fish and what they look like, how they live and suffer in their final days in fresh water. They feed us, they feed the riverside forest trees and all the creatures that live next to salmon streams. They’re not a gift to be taken lightly.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story, Wildlife

Anemones – My monthly magazine story for August 2018

I’m a bit late on posting some of my 48 North magazine stories. Just too many interesting paintings happening that always seem more current. This one was the story pages back in August, so that meant I painted it in June. I promise, I’ll catch up to current soon.

And here’s just the art. It’s watercolor and pencil, brightened up with the computer before assembling the story with a readable font. I’ve tried this with my own lettering but it’s just not nearly as readable. 48 North magazine is here.

I have over 70 stories in past issues and you can read them on my website here.

I did another plumose anemone story before this one. Here it is from 2027,

And here’s the story:

Plumose Anemone

Look down the closest piling at low tide and chances are good you’ll see these animals. Yes, they animals, animals that look like flowers. Animals with deadly stinging tentacles that can move around and even grab, kill and eat small fish. There are many species of anemones in the Salish Sea, some tiny inch-wide creatures that congregate in colorful crowds, others can be two feet tall. The plumose averages a respectful 12” tall and can have up to 100 tentacles that sting and grab any morsel that floats by. The meal, often microscopic, is then transferred down into a waiting mouth, throat and stomach to be consumed. Remember Little Shop of Horrors? This is an oceanic equivalent, except there are millions of them under our docks and floats. Low tide might expose them to air, in which case they sort of fold up like a deflated balloon and wait for the incoming tide.

Anemones can move about, leaving one spot behind when it senses danger or a lack of food. When it does, it simply walks off, but leaves behind some anemone DNA and from this a new anemone will grow. In summer, it also creates and releases sperm and eggs that drift around until ‘things happen’. This animal is well-armed, as I said. It possesses two types of stinging tentacles, the most common is for stinging prey, a second set is for defense. These can elongate 2 or 3 times their length and reach out to attach anything passing by – think stinging nettles on your favorite river trail. Others from inside the body can be shot through the body column or mouth to do the same attacking. Basically, this beautiful animal may look great but it’s a killer if you’re a small witless creature swimming past. So, here’s the drill: at low tide, put your stomach on the dock, peep down the piling well and have a look for yourself. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Lime Kiln Point – Orca Wayside Art in the San Juan Islands

This painting is one of four for Lime Kiln State Park, west side of San Juan Island and Friday Harbor. If you want to see whales in the Northwest without getting on a boat, this is the place. Well, technically, you have to get on a ferry to get to the island, but you get the point. On a summer day, there can be hundreds of people lined up here on the cliff to watch the killer whale show right in front of them – and soon they’ll also be immersed in my paintings as well. 

After adding the text to the panel, words and art go together fairly well on this one. Two panels are in the six-foot range, but this one is half that. The others are coming soon and I’ll try to post them as we go along.

I lived six summers in Friday Harbor when my first bigger boat, 40′ sloop “October” was here – and I had my gallery in Ferndale, Ca. This was in the 80’s, and I learned to paint the Northwest here. I’d go out to Lime Kiln Point and watch these big guys come right up to shore. Later, when Nancy and I lived on our 45′ Monk “Rumpy”, we’d come up from Port Townsend and lucky timing once put us here when an entire pod was too. We stopped the boat, turned off the engine and watched, shocked, as the entire family casually swam under us. The big male was bigger than the boat, or so it seemed. No one touched, we were thrilled, dry mouths and all. And now my art goes on shore. Paint hard, live long and connections like this happen all the time. I’m constantly thrilled at this life-long deep connection to nature. Not much matters more except the lovely person I share this with!

Thanks for reading my stuff 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 stunning photography

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

Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Waysides, Wildlife

A New Puzzle for the North Olympic Salmon Coalition

A new puzzle arrived for our local salmon restoration group and we high-jacked a few of them for us. I guess you could call it a ‘Limited Edition’. This non-profit puts restoration projects together with partners with funds to help Olympic Peninsula watersheds, and they’re just about the best bunch of folks we know around here.

Last year I did some art and designs for a series of wayside panels that completed a major habitat restoration in the estuary of Discovery Bay on the Olympic Peninsula (that’s the bay in the background of the puzzle). They decided that a jigsaw puzzle might be a perfect way to spread the word about this and raise some money. Very progressive attitude, and a perfect way to showcase some of this art.  I did the design, and below is the box back – learn about salmon and restoration, all in one.

Here’s the box front. I used three paintings, melded them together and I think it’s a fairly difficult puzzle. 

And below is one of the paintings installed. Thousands of salmon migration barriers are on streams and rivers in the Northwest. This project opened up two streams and help these fish return to spawn a next generation.  NOSC removed 1900 tons of rock, 425 tons of contaminated soils,  added 3200 feet of a community waterline and lots more. It was a big project – and I was proud to be a small part of it by providing some interpretive art. We also handled the fabrication and printing, all in a day’s work for me.

If you’d like a puzzle, you can order it here on our website. Or, call Nicole O’Hara at NOSC, (360) 379-8051 and get one as a donation to this great group. Then, if you’re local, get out here and have a look at all this.

Thanks for reading my stuff 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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Acorn Woodpeckers – Waka Waka Waka

“Tending their graineries”.  I haven’t painted these interesting birds in years, and a private commission presented an opportunity to that just that. I was first made aware of these crazy guys when I was teaching painting at the Yosemite Association back in the early 80’s. A big deal for me, I was in the old historic railroad building at El Portal to meet the Executive Director and try to make a decent impression. He had a marvelous second story office, old wood paneling, a big railroad desk, casement windows. In the middle of the conversation, he suddenly got up and started pounding on the walls, first one then another. No explanation and he didn’t even break up a sentence. Later I found out it was acorn woodpeckers trying to store nuts in the knotholes, probably been doing it a hundred years! And I’ve been in love with these clown-faced birds since.

And then the buyer, who has been trying to get another original painting from me since, he says, 1990. What took so long I’m  not sure, but I’m glad to help out. Yes, these birds actually drill holes in dead snags and dry their acorns, hundreds of them and often in drilled rows like sapsuckers do as well. Yaka, yaka, yaka. Once heard, never forgotten.

Yes, I do private commissions on occasion. If you’re interested, just let me know, and be patient (but not 30 years).

Thanks for reading my stuff 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 stunning photography

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