All posts by Brush Man

With more art in America's National Parks than any other artist.
Commissioned paintings, National Park Service, People Paintings

American Camp mural progress report

One man with a brush! One brush stroke at a time! (these blow up in your browser to see details)

Personally, I think there must be an easier way to pass the time in my 70’s, but here I am none-the-less – cranking away on a super-complex wall mural in my studio.  I’d  have to say this project sure is fun and a real challenge, and keeps my brain about as sharp as it can be.  I’m just glad I took physics and higher math in high school.

This is being painted half-size for a 35′-wide x 17′ tall wall in the new visitor center at the San Juan Island National Historical Park near Friday Harbor, Washington. Same project, I  finished the first one, a big prairie ecosystem painting. This is a bigger thing by far. This is the entire side wall of the building, and has all sorts of stuff complicating things, wall plugs, fire alarms, a door, a reader rail with tribal artifacts – makes me dizzy just trying to work it out.

What’s Going On?

This scene shows the summer gathering on the prairies at South Beach and Salmon Banks in the San Juan Islands, where many tribes would gather in late summer to fish and dry salmon, dig and roast camas bulbs and lay in winter stores.  The buildings were temporary. This went on for thousands of years and so the painting is set in a pre-iron, pre colonization time, maybe 500 years ago. So far, Nancy has been the model for almost all the people. I think there are about 30 of them. Some facial features I found online in the Curtis photo library, some I took from modern tribal gathering photos but just slimmed everyone down. This was also pre-refined sugar and wheat times.

So how is this installed?

I’ll do the sky as a separate painting using a car paint sprayer, scan and photograph all of it, piece it together into on giant digital file. Then Capitol Museum Services in Manassas, Virginia will put it on vinyl and up it goes (thankfully, I don’t have to do that part).  I’m just the guy with the paintbrush.

More soon. Stay tuned. Feel free to pass this around. People seem to like seeing my process.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, National Park Service, People Paintings, Wildlife

Prairie Mural – San Juan Island National Historical Park


I finished my prairie mural for the San Juan Islands National  Historical Park a few days ago. So, I thought I’d pass it around here where I reliably get some feedback – good or bad. A very solitary live I have, painting and just sending this stuff out to wait for time to happen. I think I nailed the landscape well, but I won’t know for awhile. Below are some portions of it, left and right sides.

And below is the sketch. This place is very complex when you actually get down on your knees and look at it. VERY complex. As in, how the heck do I paint THIS? And the real physical place is much more detailed than I attempted.

I wrote this about my project here a few months ago: I have a long history with the San Juan Islands of Washington State. In the 80’s and on my own restored boat, I summered here while I learned to paint (heck, I’m still learning to paint). And now I’m back there making some rather large murals for the new visitor center at the American Camp unit of the National Historical Park down at the island’s south end at Cattle Point and South Beach. Nancy and I went there a few weeks ago, a FOUR ferry ride for us up and back!

This will be printed (the original won’t be on the wall in case the terrorists burn it down) and will be 6′ wide x 5′ high. Surrounding the visitor center is open prairie stuck out on a point with water on both sides – and one of the most beautiful places in the Salish Sea.

I cropped out some detailed sections so you could see the drawing better, but even so it’s a fairly complex bunch of lines. There are glacial erratic boulders that have some strange mossy adaptions, a butterfly only found here, voles and snails, birds and invasive rabbits. Red foxes that are Cascade dark phase colors, lots of black-tailed deer and meadowlarks (a bird we’ve never seen here at home just 30m south) We saw almost everything going in the painting on the site visit.

Here are my drawings for the bottom section. See how much more open it is so it’s understandable. In the color phase it got much more detailed. Truly fun to paint.

Here’s the empty building waiting for these two paintings, plus another dozen smaller ones. Getting the first one finished helps me understand how I’ll handle the color and detail on the others. The big wall is next, 38 feet of it. Thanks, Joe, Sara and Lex at the park for making this a fun and interesting project.

This view of the prairie and Strait shows scenery, but it also has lots of my paintings if you know where to look. From Mount Rainier NP in the very distant background 100 miles away, to state parks and land trust installations in between, I think I probably have 100 paintings in various exhibits and waysides in view here. But who’s counting.

And here’s the 38′ wall with my concept sketch for the next painting. How the heck I show a 38′ wall in a dinky blog post, I’m not even going to try to do. So stay tuned.

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 Published Story, Wildlife

How Birds Stay Warm in Winter

This was my 48 North magazine story for December, 2021. Since Port Townsend and most of Western Washington are locked in a deep-freeze snow event, I thought it might be interesting to pass this around. Above is the watercolor art, below is the final page of the journal.

And here’s the text for the art:

Baby, it’s cold outside. But compared with some other places, the Arctic, Alaska – the Salish Sea has a fairly balmy winter. So balmy that many thousands of birds migrate here to spend winters in relative comfort. It’s still cold, but birds have adapted and evolved to help them survive our winters. On average, a bird’s body temperature is 104OF, so they’re even more vulnerable to cold than we are. Probably their biggest adaptation is an innate knowledge that if they fly south, it’ll be more comfortable. And there are other physical adaptions to get them to spring. Most birds have the ability to control each one of those thousands of feathers individually – so they can fluff their feathers up to trap warm air between feathers and skin, creating a down coat. You may have seen birds ‘fluffing up’ this time of year in periodic motions.

Most birds also have feet and legs that aren’t as warm-blooded as their bodies. Instead, those parts are mostly bones and skin, so less heat is required than to warm fatty tissues. Legs and feet also have an intricate network of unusual intertwined blood vessels that is a built-in heat transfer system. This creates a counter-current of warm blood passing by the cold returning blood, a heat exchange system that keeps the heat in their bodies’ core instead of trying to keep external parts warm, too. When the cold blood from feet, now somewhat pre-warmed arrives in the core, it’s already back up to nearly body temperature. Other methods: when birds sleep, their bills get tucked under feathers to keep that part warm, but also to inhale warmer air into their lungs, again saving the effort to keep their body core warm. This of it as a down muff. Take a moment on that cold winter morning marina walk and watch these guys. See any ‘fluffing’ going on?

This is the original line drawing it all started with. I saw this gull downtown, leg tucked to keep it warm, nose in its feathers, one eyeball open (sort of). Two nights ago it  hit 16 degrees, just so unlike our normal world here.

Happy Holidays and we welcome you to read along with our art and travels next year. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep stuffing wood in this big black hole.

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 Bunch of Art for Capital Reef National Park

I’ve painted a bunch of stuff for Capital Reef National Park in Utah before, simply one of the most glorious pieces of scenery in an area full of glorious places. Murals, nature guides, trail guides, images made into posters and puzzles – the works. Now they have a new visitor center and I just finished 21 pieces of art for new exhibits. Here are some.

It used to be they had stuffed dead animals in visitor centers. No more of THAT stuff. Instead, they hire me to paint life-sized renderings that get printed on upright metal slabs, and it might actually look better than old moth-eaten dead things.  The mountain lion was especially fun, but the jackrabbit and coyote were, too.

And here’s how it will look in the visitor center once it’s installed. Fairly realistic and hopefully it’ll make kids run for the door.

Then there are nine of these things, all either full paintings or pen and watercolor of the geologic features. They’re not large, but hopefully accurate enough to how this place actually looks. This is involved in a strata wall showing all the layers and layers that make that place so colorful and amazing.

Then there are eight of these, fun little paintings (fun for me) of ancient geologic moments in time that show how all this came together to become Capital Reef National Park.

Thanks to everyone at the park for bringing me back to contribute once again to this great place. I simply never want to stop doing this, now in my 5th decade of painting national parks in America. And, amazingly, they always say yes.

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.

Commissioned paintings, National Park Service, People Paintings

San Juan Island National Historical Park

I have a long history with the San Juan Islands of Washington State. In the 80’s and on my own restored boat, I summered here while I learned to paint (heck, I’m still learning to paint). And now I’m back there making some rather large murals for the new visitor center at the American Camp unit of the National Historical Park down at the island’s south end at Cattle Point and South Beach. Nancy and I went there a few weeks ago, a FOUR ferry ride for us up and back!

It was truly fun to see all these places again, and I got some good references, one of which is shown above in drawing form. This one is 6′ x 5′ and will be on the wall shown below, far left, and shows the complex natural prairie that grows here. It’s open prairie stuck out on a point with water on both sides – and one of the most beautiful places in the Salish Sea.

I cropped out some detailed sections so you could see the drawing better, but even so it’s a fairly complex bunch of lines. There are glacial eratic boulders that have some strange mossy adaptions, a butterfly only found here, voles and snails, birds and invasive rabbits. Red foxes that are Cascade dark phase colors, lots of black-tailed deer and meadowlarks (a bird we’ve never seen here at home just 30m south) We saw almost everything going in the painting on the site visit.

Both of these paintings will be the main focus of the inside. The second painting (shown at the bottom) will need to be redrawn, but it fills the entire main wall, 38 feet by 17 ft high. That’ll be another post or two. Our goal was getting that beautiful prairie drawn before the wind and rain came. Which we did!

And here’s the 38′ wall with my concept sketch. How the heck I show a 38′ wall in a dinky blog post, I’m not even going to try to do. So stay tuned.

On the way home the next day, we were coming across Whidbey Island in between the two ferries. That road always has a stunning view of the Olympics and our home in Port Townsend, but the sunset did it up right, showing us yet again why we picked this place to be a artists. See that big freighter? Port Townsend is just on shore behind it.

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.

Commissioned paintings, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Everglades Preliminary Drawings

This is the fishing camp we could have stayed in, accessible only by air boat – but NO, I had to sleep in the Best Western in Homestead, Florida! Yes, I checked it out and the python had left.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a few weeks, but the art has been flowing out of here like a narrow channel after a King Tide. Meaning fast and furious. I was in Everglades National Park in July for a site visit for this and now have all 17 drawings in refined versions finished up. After this, let the paint begin so this gater-guy can admire the installation right next to his home slough.

All these are for outdoor waysides, so they’ll have text blocks.  That’s what the empty white areas are for. I know, it would be better if it was all painting, but these installations will teach people about this place for many decades – long after I’m gone, kids will wander down these boardwalks and maybe learn something. One is bigger, an 8′ wide mural, but I haven’t started that yet.

These are some photos of the site visit. Lots of walking slowly around and talking, the pros telling us Northwesterners the scoop about this rare place. I learned a lot about a lot, from one end of the Sea of Grass to the other.

This drawing is about the strange and wonderful anhinga bird, and it’s actually going ON the anhinga trail. These birds hunt by slowly swimming along underwater and stabbing fish, and I got to watch that in action.

And several pieces of art are about herons. Lots of herons. There are TEN species of herons in this one painting and shows how they follow the receding water level as the season’s change and the ‘river’ dries.

There’s an algae that grows all over the place here. Periphyton. It’s food, shelter and covers the ground pretty much everywhere the shallow water is. It floats, then dives to the bottom, then dries out then the water recedes. All in one painting!

Stay tuned as this project develops. I want to thank the good folks at EDX Exhibits in Seattle for taking another chance on me, for traveling across the country and then still speak to me! Life is good.

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

American Golden-plover

This is my October 49 North magazine story. I got my copy in the mail the other day and thought I should put it here now, too. Magazines are in the stores. Here’s the story that went with the sketchbook art. This isn’t a bird that’s too common around  my home here in Port Townsend, so I did a story about what I saw.

Last spring, I saw hundreds of American golden-plovers on the western wilderness beaches of Olympic National Park. They were spending their days resting and eating sand flies, then at dusk they would rise in a rush of wings and head north, using the safety of darkness to fly. Migration is a long journey for these nine-inch birds.

They winter in Argentina and Uruguay, then fly all the way to the Canadian arctic to nest – and then return. Repeat yearly! They can do that because of the swept-backed skinny shape of their wings, and comparisons to tall windward sail designs is obvious. It’s still a dangerous and grueling journey twice a year – they live lives on the wing. Once on the nesting grounds, males build crude nests lined with lichens and four eggs appear. Males incubate by day, females at night. Chicks can feed themselves within a few hours of hatching, and I take it that it takes four chicks per pair each year to replace the birds lost during those long migrations.

I have pleasant memories of those birds last spring, but then kayaking along the outer breakwater at Port Townsend recently, I saw a large flock of golden-plovers sitting on the rocks. Some still had their summer feathers, along with a bunch of youngsters in drab browns, and it was like seeing old friends again. I quietly floated right up to them, had a good look and then they flew in a cloud and came around to land just a few yards away. I wondered if any of these were the very same birds I saw a few months earlier and realized how connected we all are to wildlife – if we only are aware of it. Boats were coming and going right over on the breakwater’s other side, yet here was a little community of birds from Argentina and the Arctic, just gabbing away at each other. It’s not what you see when you look, but what you understand.

And many of you ask about my process, so here’s the original pencil sketch, and below after I painted it up with my cheap but trusty Prang watercolor kit.

And on that beach in spring, I did this little watercolor of a golden-plover standing right in front of me. That’s my little Six Moon tent at the bottom.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Waysides, Wildlife

More at California Creek

Two more finished panels and paintings for my California Creek project at Blaine Washington.  Actually, these two panels represent 17 paintings, using with lots of little ones together. The first two were about birds and wildlife, these two are stories about clean water, shellfish and tides – and a long history of thousands of years of salmon and the people that followed them here. Here is the original concept drawing – it evolves a long, long way to finally becoming a finished installation. These will be in fused aluminum and last probably 30 years.

The fourth panel is about salmon and the people who hunted them. Eight paintings for this one. The main painting shows a summer salmon camp at the mouth of the creek where they caught and smoked the fish.

The original concept sketch, a bit more refined than the other one. I used Curtis photos as references.

And here, again, are the other two. These four will be lined up along the shoreline on an interpretive trail near a  new kayak launch.  Might have to go there with my boat and try it out. I like nothing better than creating these installations. Get out of the car, walk up to an overlook and here are a bunch of paintings that teach. An art gallery on the beach!

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.

Commissioned paintings, Waysides, Wildlife

California Creek – waysides for a new park

I’ve been painting four of these and we’re closing in on final versions. I thought this a good time to show two of them off. No, California Creek isn’t in California, but close to the Canadian border near Blaine Washington. The creek flows into Drayton Harbor and then the Salish Sea close to Semiahmoo Spit. It’s been in the process for awhile, but a new kayak launch park is being build at the estuary of the creek into Drayton Harbor, a perfect place for some of my paintings.

This creek has lots of hobby farms and residents upstream, and water quality has suffered from animal waste and failing septics. Lots of work  has gone into fixing all that, and this second panel tells that story. Get the animals away from the creek! And fix your mess! I think both these tell the story pretty well.

Here are a couple of shots of the area. A perfect place for an afternoon with either a kayak or paddleboard. The launch will be right at the left bridge approach with parking, and, four of these panels.

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, Published painting, Wildlife

A Story about Painted Anenomes

This is my monthly story for September 2021 in 48 North magazine.  By a quick count, it’s my 111th edition, probably worthy of a book if I had the time to put it together. It’s still fun for me to do, to go out and see something interesting and new that I don’t know about. I  research it and paint it – and I gain more fun knowledge to stuff in my ancient brain. I think it keeps me young!

Here’s the story:

Anemones are mostly stationary animals that have stinging tentacles to subdue prey. Their waving arms then transport the hapless creature to a center mouth where it quickly becomes the next meal. The Painted Anemone, also known as Christmas Anemone, is one of the most common anemones around the San Juan Islands. They feed on crabs, mussels, barnacles and fish. Not every creature is fair game, as the Candy-striped Shrimp (appropriately named), seems to be immune to the sting, and so one can find a candy-stripe next to a painted, neatly tucked into the anemone’s waving arms of death.

Painted Anemones are about five inches tall, drama queen colored and sport about 100 tentacles arranged in circular rows. Somehow, these creatures can attack the relatively huge Sunflower Star, a star that can grow to a three-foot diameter. We don’t need to dive to see these striking animals as they’re commonly seen on a minus tide, drooping or hanging from sheltered rocks like a deflated balloon. They don’t have bones to hold them upright when out of the water. While it seems they’re ‘stuck’ in place, anchored like a plant, if extreme danger threatens, they can ‘unstick’ themselves and move away on foot. It must work, because Painted Anemones can live sixty to eighty years.

And here’s the pencil drawing before the watercolor was added. It’s a quick and really abstract process for me. Not much thought does into it, but then again it’s ALL thought – a free thought from eyes to fingers.


And below is a closeup piece of it to s how how abstract and scribbly it was.  Somehow it all comes together with the paint.

Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.

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.