All posts by Brush Man

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

Crater Lake Institute website – A Side Project

I’ve posted about Crater Lake Institute before, but we reached a sort-of milestone the past couple of months and I wanted to share. As a side project unrelated to painting, I build and maintain the website for Crater Lake Institute, a non-profit that helps Crater Lake National Park located in southern Oregon. This is a great bunch of guys who used to work for the park and now supply an amazing resource, the best single web-based library about the park – and I’ve supplied art, publication services and lots of work building out this website to the organization.

Winter at Headquarters, photo by Ranger Dave Grimes, March 16, 2016

This past three months, we’ve now reached web visitation levels worthy of mention. We’ve been averaging over 600,000 hits and over 80,000 individual visitors per month. That’s a LOT of eyeballs – at least I think so. This past year we’ve partnered with REI Trails, NPSHistory.com and others to broaden our connections and I’m fairly proud of what’s happening with all of it. Thanks, Ron and everyone else at CLI for involving me. It’s been great fun and I sure know a lot about this amazing park because of it.

Watchman Peak at Sunrise, March 17, 2016 by Ranger Dave Grimes

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 stunning photography

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

New Published Story

One of Virginia’s Best is Now on Kindle

This week I hit the publish button on Kindle and Virginia Eifert now has six of her books on Amazon’s Kindle. Land of the Snowshoe Hare is 326 pages and was first published in 1960. It’s a collection of stories about a single bit of forest and water in northern Wisconsin. The book watches a year pass as she discovers and follows the critters and plants that live there – a delightful read, I think, but then she’s mom.

As with all these Kindle reprints, I’ve added support material. I found  and added a research notebook she put together in 1950 when she first began her study of this beautiful place, and there are photos, a journal about what she saw and where she went. Yes, I’m in the journal, too, seeing my first rainbow at age three over a swampy marsh with loons and overhanging pines.

Who’s Virginia? She published 20 books for Dodd Mead in New York as well as hundreds of essays and smaller publications for the Illinois State Museum, Audubon, Nature magazine and others.

Next up? I’m thinking about her ‘Essays on Nature’ that was first published by the museum after her death in 1966. Stay tuned, it’s a great read as all of them are. She was an early environmental force and friends with the likes of Rachael Carson. It’s no surprise how I turned out!

If you’d like a free sample to read, click here for Land of the Snowshoe Hare.

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 stunning photography

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

Murals, Wildlife

Progress on Cache River National Wildlife Refuge Mural

Just a progress report – a snapshot of how this current effort is going. Okay, I think. It needs to get much messier, more foliage, downed stuff, details in the critters, but it takes time to throw paint on 12 feet of mud, trees and leaves.

I’m finding this a very unusual ecosystem to paint, different than anything I’ve worked on before – and that’s saying something. Seasonal flooding in the Mississippi floodplain of Arkansas means a very difficult situation for plants to exist. Critters can just move with the water’s ups-and-downs, but plants are a different deal – they can’t leave. So, lots of water-tolerant trees and vines that can get above it all. One grape, for instance, can’t climb, so it’s starts life by grabbing onto a small shrubby tree and just waiting, going up with the tree as it grows towards the canopy. Crazy, because this is a closed-canopy forest so  how long might that plant wait to get there? Other vines climb like crazy and in the old days of old-growth, they must have been ancient thick things the size of my arm.

Here’s one of my references taken by Eric, my go-to guy for photos and the refuge dendrologist. Am I getting the colors close to right?

And finally, here’s my progress as it’ll look in this section of the visitor center. There is also some text on both sides and bottom, but this shows it’s overall placement so I can tell what’s going on. Stay tuned for more, more mud, brown water, muddy trees and all.

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 stunning photography

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

Murals

Cache River National Wildlife Refuge mural progress

This project is charging ahead in my studio and I realized I hadn’t posted anything about it. It’s a 151″-wide painting for the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. Yes, I’ve been here. No, not for a long time. My mom did a project here many years ago about the ivory-billed woodpecker for Audubon magazine, the last place the birds was seen back in the 1950’s and the last place it was recently seen – I’d like to think maybe extinction isn’t as easy. This painting will show a seasonal stream partially flooding, low-land swampy forests of bald-cypress and tupelo, poison ivy and muscatel vines, snakes and spring warblers – and a bunch of critters that live here. It’ll also have some critters that DON’T live here, like woods bison, red wolves and maybe a bear. Two epochs in one painting, hummm!

Commissioned by Rosene Creative from Georgia who is doing the rest of the exhibits, I’m loving the chance to paint a forest amazingly different from the one I live in. Thanks to Eric at the refuge who’s been sending me a trove of photos I think I’m getting it.

And here’s the sketch. If you click on it, it’ll open in your browser.

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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post

Mount Rainier Carbon River painting complete

 

Click the image to see it larger in your browser.

Finished up my Carbon River painting and sent the final file for approval. I think it’s close. This is my second large painting for that amazing place, and I think it’s better than the first installed at Ohanapecosh. It sure is more complex. Things changed as it progressed, and I’m appreciative of the park folks, especially Kristyn, who trusted me enough to give the freedom to alter approved content.

And here’s Nancy on the trail where the painting was sited, an old cedar boardwalk through the skunk cabbage. The thing about Northwest rain forests – they’re really messy, I mean amazingly messy – and crowded. Nothing tidy lives here when you have a zillion plants all competing for space, branches laying all over, broken and decaying trees, shrubs, ferns, mushrooms and the rest.  I hope I got that feeling for crowded biomass! This painting will now be scanned and an entire exhibit, both digital and 2-dimensional will be built around it for the Carbon River Ranger Station. Come see it next summer.

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 stunning photography

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

New Published Story

My 48 North story for October

 

In the midst of three large paintings – you can’t say yes too many times I guess.  But then I saw this in the local boating store and thought it printed pretty well, so I’ll share it here. Next time I’ll post some of the painting-stuff.
If you’re reading this on the web, the top image is the little boat I built when I was 15. Leaked like a sock, but at least I did it!

And here’s the text that went with the art.

Seagulls. Sorry, but there is no such thing. Gulls are found in the desert, high mountains, northern Canada in the spruce forests – so how could that bird be a SEAgull? Got it? Now –onward. Our most common GULL in the Salish Sea is the glaucous-winged gull, a big, brash and aggressive yeller that will take a French fry bag right off your table at Iver’s. Glaucous means bluish-gray, a good description of these pale-looking gulls. But in the fall, another gull arrives from its breeding grounds in the boreal spruce forests of Canada, Bonaparte’s gull. They’ve spent their summers far to the north, first courting along the shores of fresh water lakes and then building nests of twigs and moss on branches of short spruce trees. In early autumn after raising gull families, they head south as winter closes in. Many come to the Salish Sea.

This is one of the smallest gulls in North America, just a little over 13 inches long and weighing in at less than half a pound. Compared with the locals that measure in at 27 inches long and almost 4 pounds, they’re like little half-sized miniatures. They fly like ballerinas, gracefully turning and dipping, almost flamboyant in their aerial work and can easily be mistaken for a tern. Look for them along tidal rips and shallow shorelines where they plunge-dive for forage fish – unlike our big local gulls that couldn’t dive if their lives depended on it. Their dark heads lighten to white in winter except for a small dark ear patch, and then come Spring their heads darken again, the legs and feet brighten, and they head north for another summer in the spruce.

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

New Painting Post

Bewicks Wren – Yellow Fern

A new painting.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Sorry, it’s sold.

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.

Murals, Waysides

Fish Feast for Ludington State Park in Michigan

[Click on the finished painting to enlarge it – I put a much bigger version on the web so you can see details]

I’ve been painting fish, a lot of fish!  This is for Ludington State Park in Michigan and is part of three images that total 18 feet long. This one is for kids, but it really could be a fish-who’s-who for anyone. The Vienna that went down a century ago, yes, there really is a ship wreck there that looks like this. And, yes, they really have Chinook and Coho Salmon, and a bunch of other alien fish that have either been planted or let loose and are now creating havoc in Lake Michigan.

Double-crested Cormorant by Larry Eifert
Small-mouthed Bass by Larry Eifert

We decided that the fish might be used in other Michigan State Parks in other interpretive projects, so I painted the fish and the cormorant separately, then floated them over the background digitally. That means they can use them any size or placement in all sorts of ways – sort of a fine-art digital mashup.

Chinook Salmon by Larry Eifert

I’m always asked how the heck Larry Eifert in Port Townsend Washington gets to paint fish in Michigan. Well, this project came from Joan at Genesis Graphics in Michigan, a long time supporter of what I like to do – and then through Theresa at Michigan State Parks in the  Upper Peninsula. Theresa was very nice to work with and we seemed to hit it off – so I hope to do more for them. So, the final installation will be at Ludington down on the west side of lower Michigan right on the lake – not 30 miles from where I lived for awhile in Door County Wisconsin. Small world.

And it’s an ever-widening circle of friends that keeps me going.

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.

New Painting Post

Rufous-sided Towhee – Our Feeder Buddy

Many of you know that I like to paint from experiences. These birds: they’re just so . . .  full of themselves. Or so it seems. We have a family of these guys here that spend their entire lives not 30 feet from the big six-foot tray feeder. Recently, one, possibly the kid from last year, showed up without it’s long and almost gaudy tail, hobbling around and looking truly messed up. The local sharp-shinned hawk if I had to guess. But in a few weeks there were new tail feathers and the limp was gone. So, here he is in a painting.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

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.

New Painting Post

Alpineglow

Another painting in my ‘Trail Series’. When I was growing up the word ‘alpenglow’ was like an elixir, something akin to magic. For Mid-western flat-landers who only experienced these places on rare occasions, I vividly remember the few times we finally got up there in the Porcupines or Rockies. My parents knew how to do it, to stay late, wait for sundown when the light came – and later drive down the hill in growing darkness. For Virginia, it was as close to  god as it gets.

I now live where I can see this easily, but not all THAT easily. We still have to work for it with a hike, but that elixir is still there when we arrive, that ‘magic-time’ photographer Galen Rowell always spoke of. So, this little painting is one of my favorite ‘alpineglow’ places, right up the hill from home in the Dungeness watershed of the Olympics. At sunset, it’s a place I’d rather be than just about anywhere.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

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.