All posts by Brush Man

With more art in America's National Parks than any other artist.
New Published Story, Posts about other stuff

Crater Lake Institute – a side project

I’ve not posted anything about this small side project, but it’s far enough along for me to brag a bit. For the past year, I’ve been rebuilding the Crater Lake Institute’s web presence. Currently, it stands at 3588 pages and counting. That’s right, 3588 pages.

Who and what? Crater Lake Institute is a group that works to enhance Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in many ways. They’ve collected more historic stuff about this park than anyone, bought equipment for the nationally-recognized Ski Patrol, commissioned over a dozen murals of my art for many places around the West, hosted rim-side interpretive walks, created publications about the park no one else has even considered doing. The board (that I now am on) is a bunch of retired NPS folks, amazing in their knowledge of this beautiful place.

I was approached to rebuild a very aging and almost dead website – but little did I realize how massive this thing was. In fact, it’s the largest digital and free collection of Crater Lake material anywhere. Huge sections are here on what to do in the park, Geology, Natural History, Oral Histories, Art, Weather, a giant collection of historic photos, stories, newspaper accounts going back into the 1800’s. I’ve also added my art here and there, sprinkled it with magic dust and – Oh, I could go on!

Because of this, the never-tiring park-painter has learned more about Crater Lake than probably any park I’ve ever worked on. Just ask me about the hand grenade death in the 80’s, the secret trails few park people even know about, the inside scoop on more stuff than my little brain can handle. And the best part is that I’ve gotten to know founder and board president Ron Mastrogiuseppe, fondly known as M13, one of the most genuine and interesting park people I’ve come across.

CLI-home-page-2
More of the front page

Thanks for reading this week.

Spend a moment and look at the site – then tell me what you think. http://craterlakeinstitute.com
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

Sunset Hike – an original acrylic painting

Sunset Hike – click to enlarge

I did this painting a couple of months ago, but it never made it to the blog here, so . . .

I was by myself, coming back from a day in the Upper Royal Basin meadows and walking down to meet Nancy at the campsite.  I came through a bit of open space in the meadows on the bench below Royal Lake.  I’ll bet some of you know this area where the first good campsites await after a bunch of miles on that hot upslope trail.

The late-afternoon light was just blasting through these trees and really lighting up the grass – like spotlights were back in the silver firs. I was just spending way too much energy admiring it when I tripped on a rock, and down I went into the grass. Good time to get the camera out, and this painting is what happened later.

It’s such a sweet memory of a great experience that I’m keeping it for myself, and THAT doesn’t happen very often.

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

Point Wilson Light – A New Painting

Click image and it should enlarge in your browser.

Still available for $1750, framed.

Lots of very low tides recently, and this view (at least to me) of our local lighthouse never disappoints. This is a fairly large painting, 24″ x 48″ acrylic on canvas, and framed right now as you see it (but we can change that for you).

I can also change the frame to this one, a hemlock simple and varnished.

The most interesting thing about this place is not that it’s a beautiful spot right here in my town, but that it’s the very point that divides the Strait of Juan deFuca with Puget Sound, a direct connection to the ocean that’s about 90 miles northwest of  here. It’s real ocean environment here on the west side, with a cooler and wilder ocean with kelp beds, real waves and a feel of the north. East of the lighthouse, just a few  hundred yards from here, it’s Port Townsend Bay, Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound – a vastly different place with sheltered bays, a calm and collected environment where most of the people around here live. They say the richest and most interesting locations are ‘edge’ places, just like this. I love it!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 48″ and $1750 our price, not gallery price. Outside edge of the frame is about 28″ x 51″.
This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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 Published Story

Northwestern Crows Published

This was published last month in 48 North magazine for my monthly contribution. We have a pair of these guys nesting in our woods, so it seems appropriate.

Here’s the story: And just why is this guy doing a crow page in a sailing magazine? Because they’re not just crows, a common bird that everyone knows, but a Northwestern crow. Yes, we have our own crow species! Looks exactly the same but smaller, ‘KAWWW’ sounds the same but deeper and hoarser voiced. If you’re on or around salt water in the Salish Sea and north all the way to Alaska, likely the all-black beach bird you’re looking at is a Northwestern crow. Problem is, you can’t be sure because in urban areas they now mingle, mix and interbred – but once you get to the Olympic Peninsula, you can be fairly confident you’re seeing one of these guys.

By far, the best trait you can look for are their clamming skills. Browsing the shoreline wrack for anything edible, they’ll often pick up a live cockle or clam, fly straight up to about 30 feet, change course to level off – and drop the shell to the rocks below. Most of the time the shell breaks on the first try and down they go for lunch. Evidently they level off to see where the shell lands so they can grab it before a gull does. Normal American crows don’t seem to do this, just Northwestern crows. On some beaches, I’d have to say that of birds on the beaches, there may be more Northwestern crows than gulls.

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

Summer Return of the Prairie – a new painting

Last week I posted another outdoor wayside panel – the spring version of this same place. Now, here’s the second panel about summer at the Naas Preserve on Whidbey Island prairie – prescribed burns, summer flowers and pollinators, a real riot of color. They’re both going to be installed at just north of my home in Port Townsend. Not easy making a nice painting with a fire in it, but I’ve actually painted several fire images before for a National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota. This one was much more fun.

These paintings require lots of field trips and research time. It’s the best part of it, with both of us joining forces to figure out details from white-crowned sparrows to goldenrod. Sure, field guides tell me what the thing looks like, but not how they attach to the ground, or how they look in summer when the landscape is drying out, or how does the sparrow grab onto the goldenrod as it’s singing. Here’s Nancy working on some strawberry plants that the Whidbey – Camano Land Trust is growing in a small nursery at the site. Later, I put all these images on my tablet for reference at the easel.

So what’s the point of these outdoor panels? To me, they’re like an an outdoor art gallery. Some trails have a couple of dozen of these panels, and I love to imagine people hiking along enjoying the nature around them but maybe not understanding it. Behold, here’s a nice painting with some words to help them out. While I still sell  paintings to private collectors (who then hang them on their walls, never to be seen in public again), I think I see these outdoor efforts might be a higher calling. It’s public art in the best way, don’t you think?

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

Spring in a Vanishing Ecosystem – a new painting

Click and this will enlarge in your browser

Two new wayside panels went off to the fabricator this week. Here’s my favorite. Both are 24″ x 48″ and will live their lives right here on this lovely bit of nature called Nasse’s Prairie on Whidbey Island, Washington. Part of the Whidbey Island Land Trust’s rather heroic efforts to restore this bit of natural prairie on the Admiralty Inlet Natural Area Preserve where some extremely rare flowers live. In fact, golden paintbrush is here and is only found in twelve places, two right here on this prairie. The original painting is 24″ x 48″, acrylic on hardboard. Thanks, everyone at the Land Trust, but especially Mark, who helped me in delightful ways and never once got ‘postal’ on me.

And here’s Nancy with her pack full of camera gear taking the reference photos for this painting. Looks like I got the colors about right in the painting above.

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

Song Sparrow study

A new painting today, a small study of one of my meadow-buddies – an LBJ (Little Brown Job – as a very skilled birder once referred to them once).

Song sparrows are fairly common little birds, but their spirit in singing makes up for a lack of rareness. I think I remember reading that there are something like 50 separate races of these guys across America, and each bird can know up to 1000 variations of it’s song. The one common thread for all of them is that the song, no matter where it’s singer lives, ends with four notes resembling Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 opening, TA DA DA da. And so there’s your nature class for the day. Nancy says I cannot go an hour without attempting to teach something to someone! Okay, I admit it!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.  I also have traditional oak frames.

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. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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, Wildlife

Western Tanager study

Western-Tanager

Nancy has put oranges out by the pond for these birds. I think we get the very same pair back each year – after a winter holiday all the way down in Central America. While the female lacks the red head feathers, I’ve read that the male gets them from eating certain insects – along with berries from our cherry trees. We gladly give up our fruit for the companionship of this pair – and so I painted the male on the hunt.

And here’s the frame it’s currently in (and comes with the painting). I think the color is a tad off on the photo. The wood is more blond, painting less blue – I took it on the porch on a sunny day, so things got funky.

Western-Tanager-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 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. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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.