All posts by Brush Man

With more art in America's National Parks than any other artist.
Murals, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Wildlife

More New Mount St. Helens Paintings

These are some of the other new paintings for the Mount St Helens Visitor Center at Silver Lake, Washington. Commissioned by Washington State Parks, they are part of the interior exhibit plan and it’s complicated enough that I’ll just let the art speak for itself. There’s more than this, and the last post I published, but you’ll get the idea.

I wanted to explain the newspaper at the top. When I started painting these a few months ago, I opened one of my file cabinets to find maybe a map of the park, and this thing jumped out at me. It’s been sitting here now for 43 years, as I bought it for $2 right after the eruption – and I imagined it saying “me, me, I’m finally here to help”. And it did, as several of these paintings are direct results of the photos in this yellowing magazine. Serendipity, I think the word is.

This painting deserves a bit of explanation. Left side, immediately after the blast, right side might be today, 43 years after the blast. The elk returned immediately, and in their footsteps in the ash, water gathered and supported many critters as they expanded back into the ash zone.

And below is the mountain today (or, two summers ago when we hiked there). It’s recovering nicely and it’s always fun to see how nature finds a way to cover every inch of ground, even after it’s been blown to smithereens.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Nancy Cherry Eifert, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Wildlife

The Mount St Helens project

I’ve been working on this project since May, but the painting didn’t really start until August. I’ll bet over a million brush strokes! I’m close to finishing painting 24 images for the big revamping of the Washington State Park’s visitor center at Mt St Helens National Monument. I’m told it’s one of the biggest interpretive projects ever for Washington State Parks.

I’ve already made some art for this fantastic park before, but that was a series of outside wayside panels for the US Forest Service placed around the mountain, plus a big painting that we eventually made into a puzzle. This current effort is at Silver Lake on the park’s west side, a big visitor center built right after the eruption in 1980. I’m working with EDX in Seattle who did the designs and asked me to do the art. Sure glad they did – it’s been interesting.

For this post, I’ll focus on just the wetlands tabletop, 17 feet long and 4 feet wide, it’s one of the most complex visitor center exhibits I’ve painted. Other parts of the project will be posted soon.

I have few finished photos of this, but I did get the tabletop main painting scanned – a whopping 4.5 gigabits of data that will be printed on aluminum (I think).

Drawing and the beginnings of the painted art.
Final painting for the tabletop, about 17′ wide.
Part of the left side of the tabletop.

The tabletop has all sorts of lift lids showing hidden critters beneath them. There are spinners that show the eruption, another with the evolution of Silver Lake. It’s a very busy thing and I’m hoping kids will love it.

On my next post, I’ll get into the smaller pieces of art, then the second wall (an entirely different theme and painting 14′ long).

Nancy on the boardwalk at Silver Lake. Enough wood here to build several houses, and it’s in good shape – goes on for half a mile. The volcano is straight ahead but still 25m away.

In case you don’t remember what the mountain looks like, here’s a puzzle we did some years ago for it.

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.

National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Jackson Dam Grand Teton National Park

It’s been awhile since a blog post. All our websites were hacked by a very creepy cripto outfit and it’s taken me months to get it going again. We’re good now, but way behind posting what I’ve been painting. Here’s one, a big 48″ wayside for Grand Tetons National Park, right beside the Snake River below the Jackson Dam.

You can see the sketch changes a bit as it evolved to the final painting, but the basic concepts are still there. I started this in spring, then summer made it so park staff was swamped with millions of tourists.

This is a draft mockup of the final panel, design by EDX in Seattle. Nice working with friends start to finish on these as the project goes through various contractors. Custom Southern Exhibits is doing the fabrication, an Alabama company I’ve worked with many times before.

And here’s the location, right on the beach to the right. With one of the most dramatic backdrops in America, I’m happy to keep doing this stuff, the same job I’ve had for decades – making art for National Parks, the “best idea America ever had”.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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 Painting Post

A Little Trip Down Memory Lane

Somewhere on my website at larryeifert.com, there’s a little link to click if you have one of my paintings and would like to share it. These are some of those, a few from the past and all over 40 years old. Back in the pre-digital days, I never photographed anything, and so thousands of paintings just went out the door never to be seen again. And I’ve been doing this stuff for a very long time.

But these days, not too many know my paintings didn’t always end up in parks and refuges. I was just an amateur hack, trying to learn how to put colors and shapes on paper or canvas, and not be totally embarrassed. Nope, I never went to art school. Nope, I never thought ANY of it was good, or even almost good. But somehow I actually made a living at this and somehow evolved to something vastly different than what I paint now.

This was really a struggle for me. I had a pretty good high school art teacher and somehow I got two art classes a day. And my parents made sure I was always drawing, always. So I guess you might say the only real thing I had was determination and a passion for it, whatever that is. Being broke all the time, for decades, always helped.

This little line drawing is dated 1978, so it’s 43 years old. Boy was I timid in those days, and I can see some influence of Francis Lee Jacque, the famous museum painter. My dad had an original Jacque over his office chair at the Illinois State Museum, so that’s probably where this idea came from.

And as I was learning, I had lots and lots of help. I remember this heron came from a studio I was offered at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. That’s the school about half the park service staff went to, and they had a huge collection of mounted animals to study. So, there I was in a back room using those skins and mounts to learn to paint birds. The cost? I had to tell an occasional class about my process (as if I HAD a process in those days).

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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 Painting Post, Wildlife

Under the Maple – an acrylic painting

A very personal painting for me, as these birds live with us in our little meadow here. I know them well.

Varied Thrushes are cousins to  American robins, which we also have. They’re at home on the ground in the forest, kicking leaves around looking for insects or berries – while robins tend to live in the open. We have many of these guys right here in our little patch of forest. In Fall through Spring, they can almost disappear when the maples and alders drop their leaves and look exactly the same camouflaged colors. The trillium in bloom shows it’s spring, the big-leaf maple leaves haven’t decomposed yet from last fall, the birds are brighter than normal sporting their breeding colors. I couldn’t resist putting it all together to make a painting based on a Mar’s red base color.

Here’s the link for the little 4-minute video I made about my process.

There wasn’t a sketch for this – I just started painting but with some clear ideas of composition. Here are the two reference photos I took not 100 feet from my studio.

At our place, trilliums tend to group together. I understand ants disperse the sweet seeds pods, so maybe ours are just lazy.

In the trillium reference, you can see dozens of alder catkins on the ground – it’s spring! As I progressed with this, I took a progress photo. No sketch, it helps me to see how it’s going if I look at it on a device, even my phone. In some ways, I like this version as well as the final painting.

This painting is 18″ x 24″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com.  It’s available with the nice Taos school inspired frame and I already have a shipping crate ready to go.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

I’ve been adding new videos to my YouTube Channel here. Most are about my painting process, shot in my studio.

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 Painting Post, Wildlife

The Neighborhood – a new painting

2023-3-11 “The Neighborhood” is an acrylic painting on canvas, 30″ x 40″. It’s a little story about the communities of wildlife on the Olympic Peninsula where we live – paint. This has been on my easel for awhile, changing and evolving, sort of like the critters, themselves. We’ve seen over 90 different species here in our forest, but so far not a single elk.

No preliminary sketches were made for this painting – it was laid out as I went along, placing the elk’s nose right in the center-of-interest and everyone else radiated out from there. I set the stage for a place a bit more wet than here in dry-Port Townsend, a rainforest commonly seen just west of here.

Below are some closeup shots of the details.

I made a funny little video of my process with this painting – it’s up now on my YouTube Channel. I think it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself and this one brought tears. Damned easel. I didn’t do much editing to preserve the absurdity of it.

I go into this in my video on my channel here. There are others, too.

Or here: https://youtu.be/Dj3gCVx2U6A

This painting started out as a deer painting, then it quickly evolved into an elk and after remembering the giant bull elk (two of them) I almost ran into last summer not 2 miles from here. It grew into a full-blown ecosystem effort with many critters, all of which are here in our forest – except the spotted owl. That bird has been replaced by a similar character (barred owl) that might take my head off any minute.

Below: besides the elk, there’s a Pacific wren, two black-headed grosbeaks (they nest here in the forest), a downy woodpecker and snowshoe hare.

This painting is 30″ x 40″ acrylic on canvas and is available for sale. Email me at larry@larryeifert.com for information. Framed as you see it here, I’m asking $2300 framed, normal price for this size. No gallery fees.

And we also have this darker frame. Shipping is extra, but we have the crate ready to go.

I also did some still photography of the studio recently for my videos. Here’s a fun shot of the interior where I spend many hours of my life. It should enlarge with a click.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

I’ve been adding new videos to my YouTube Channel here. Most are about my painting process, shot in my studio.

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 Painting Post, Wildlife

Pitch Ring Around the Hole

This painting is for sale, so drop me a note at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. Click the image and it should enlarge in your browser.

This is an original acrylic painting on canvas, 18″ x 24″.  A Certificate of Authentication is included. Outside dimensions with the frame is about 25″ x 31″ The framed painting is $1300. Frame options are available. Shipping is a bit extra, but we have good crates ready to go. This frame is one influenced by the Taos School solid wood frames that I’ve been using recently. Really suits the painting and brings it back to the 1940’s.

This painting was influenced by the red-breasted nuthatch family that lives next to the studio, the most friendly bunch of birds I know. When I was building the design of this new painting, I remembered that they tend to bring fir resin to plaster a white ring around the nest cavity hole, ensuring no predictors can make it past the sticky gate. I did a video of my process, and also tell this story in my new YouTube Video, seen here with the others I’ve created. 

Here’s the original concept sketch. It shows the tree hole, parents gathered around tending to the ‘kids’. The design stayed pretty much the same to completion, which is often the case. What initially feels right to me, stays put in my mind. At this stage, I don’t think I remembered the pitch hole idea. That happened as the painting proceeded.

 

My models right outside our dining room window. Parents trying to teach the kids how to do it.

The story of birds using fir pitch on the nest entrance is well-known and even studied. I go into this in my video on my channel here.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

I’ve been adding new videos to my YouTube Channel here. Most are about my painting process, shot in my studio.

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.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Similk Bay Beach Restoration Art

I’ve painted many pieces of art for the Northwest Straits Foundation. They’re the shoreline restoration folks in Bellingham, WA that coordinates the restoration funding with actually getting the job done. And, they often come to me for the final, interpretive panel that explains what they did.

This time it was for Similk Bay along the eastern side of Whidbey Island, just northeast of Deception Pass in Washington State. It’s a very shallow bay, full of critically important eelgrass, but at low tides you could actually drive on it – it was that shallow. And people did drive on it! For years they used a small launch ramp right here, running over the eelgrass with its crabs, young salmon, forage fish, all manner of fragile aquatic life. Then: why are the crabs gone? Where are the fish?

There were people disgruntled to loose their launch pad, but sometimes progress backward is good. Below was my five-minute concept sketch. I put it in the design program to see how it fit with some text. Pretty well, I thought.

Below is my refined sketch. You can see how it’s basically it’s the same drawing, but all the details are now worked out. It still changed a lot before the final color version. All of this, including the final painting, took less than a month.

And here it is in the design program. It fits pretty well. I wrote the text, as I often do, but it was altered many times as all good writing is a collaboration before it’s final publication.

And below is the site where this printed panel will live. Cars drove right down here past the driftwood to launch their boats. The final panel below.


Here’s a sample of the beach, part of my process is to take lots of reference photos. I needed this in the studio later to figure out how the beach and bay bottom might look.

And my house model. The old launch ramp is right next to the house. I really enjoy these projects because it allows me to place art where you’d never expect to find it – ON A BEACH SAVING AN ECOSYSTEM! My paintings end up on people’s walls, but they also end up in place like this.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com. 

And thanks, Lisa, at Northwest Straits Foundation for continuing to support this guy, one man with a brush.

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.

Backpacking, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Ruddy Turnstones – Spring Migration

This painting is for sale, so drop me a note at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. Click the image and it should enlarge in your browser.

This is an original acrylic painting on canvas, 30″ x 40″.  $3600 framed. A Certificate of Authentication is included. Outside dimensions with the frame is about 36″ x 46″ and it’s not going to be framed in a cheapy frame, but one suitable for galleries. Frame options are available. We have a double-boxed professional box for this to ship with and shipping will be charged at cost.

I like to tell stories in my paintings. This one started that process when I walked out to the end of the local marina’s commercial dock and was greeted by almost 100 chattering little birds, turnstones, resting from days of migration. They fly at night for safety, rest and gossip during the day. But, I also saw them a year before on an April backpack around the Ozette Triangle Trail in Olympic National Park. I saw many sandpipers on the low-tide beach rocks just at dusk – just before they all took off in a whoosh and headed north. Sorting through photos, I ran across these trip photos and found this one, which became the rocks in the painting. It was all I needed to get the project going.

Here’s my little talk about making this painting.  It’s on my YouTube Channel along with several others.

My first-draft concept sketch. I put the grid lines in to help redraw it on the canvas.

And I’m currently putting this white-silver frame on it, but we have other styles available.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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 Painting Post, Wildlife

Owls in The Alder

Sorry, this painting is sold.

Current Original Paintings for Sale

This painting is for sale, so drop me a note at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. Click the image and it should enlarge in your browser.

This is an original acrylic painting on canvas, 18″ x 24″.  A Certificate of Authentication is included. Outside dimensions with the frame is about 25″ x 31″ The framed painting is $1300. Frame options are available. We have a double-boxed professional box for this to ship in, and it has moulded styroform forms inside for protection.

This painting is about the barred owls that have moved into our little patch of forest. We used to have great-horned owls, saw-whet and western screech owls, but these interlopers have run them off. I’m not sure where the nest is, but it’s close, and we occasionally have these guys on our tray feeder, or attacking our windows when they see their reflections. They can’t seem to get along with anyone, even themselves.

Here’s the presketch I did for the design. You can see my idea of lining up the heads in the upper center-of-interest area, then bringing the alder trunk down into the foreground.

This is a very old alder and it’s right outside the window, so my model is close. I very picturesque tree, don’t you think?

I put together my usual video talking about the painting on YouTube, which is here on my channel. If you want to listen to me yack about this painting, just click:

And below is a previous version. Close – I didn’t feel it was quite right yet. I’ll  leave  it to you to figure out what’s changed.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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.