Shouting out, because we didn’t have ANY summer puzzle season since all National Park Visitor Centers were closed – you know, where most people buy our puzzles!
But now: Just in time for the holidays, we have four new puzzles. And not just new puzzles, but new designs, smaller boxes for easier storing and mailing as gifts, and a free reference poster included in each one. The reference poster makes it easy for two people to work on a puzzle at once, and each can have a reference image (the box and the poster). The boxes are now about 60% of the size of the old ones, but the puzzles are still 500-pieces, 18″ x 24″ finished size, same sized pieces and clean cuts on the pieces. It’s a nice improvement, and we’re aiming to remake all our puzzles like this as titles run out.
Puzzle pieces in a bag, reference poster, box top and interpretive stuff on the box back. Species list and even my ink drawings on the box sides.
Olympic High Country is a painting that’s never been seen or used before for a puzzle. It was painted because this place means a lot to me, and those rare endemic animals and flowers of our local mountains are really interesting. It’s a good image for a puzzle. Here’s the link to the puzzle in the store.
Killer Whales of the Salish Sea
I painted this Orca Whales image for a park on San Juan Island, and the complexity of the background instantly made it a candidate for a jigsaw puzzle. Here’s the link to this one in our store.
Two Sides of the Sea
A new design of our best-selling image. This colorful mural is now enhanced with the reference poster and smaller box, just like the others.
Old-growth Forests of the Pacific Northwest
The fourth image is a redesign of my Mount Rainier mural at the Ohanapecosh Visitor Center on the southeast side of the park. We’re at the end of our run and thought we’d start fresh with this instead of just reprinting it. Same reference poster and smaller box as the others. The detail in the foreground makes for a really complex and entertaining puzzle that’ll keep you up all night.
Two new published stories, both in 48 North magazine a couple of months ago, the summer of 2020. This first story was about possibly the showiest and most colorful rockfish in the Pacific Northwest. It is sort of rockfish heaven here, with 17 different species, all somewhat different.
Here’s my sketch before the color version.
My story was about rockfish that can live to be over one hundred and how conservation can actually work using science. Imagine that, using science! BELIEVE IN SCIENCE! By the way, DID YOU VOTE?
Just as their name suggests, these guys prefer to live around rocks. 28 species of rockfish live in the Salish Sea, from 3-inch tide pool dwellers to 3-foot lunkers that live in deeper water and weigh in at 25 pounds. Most are slow-growing and long-lived, some live to be more than a century old. They have a completely different lifestyle from live-fast and die-young salmon. Foraging for other fish, they may swim only a few hundred miles in their lifetime. Rockfish tend to hang out together in groups around rock pinnacles or cliffs, places with lots of tidal current (which helps bring meals to them and not the other way around). Canary rockfish usually have three stripes angling down and backwards on the head, the middle one often runs across the eye. This is a very bright and distinctive fish.
The conservation of this fish is a real success story, and one that shows how science and government work together to make our lives, and the fish’s lives better. After discovering how good rockfish tastes, a definite over-exploitation of these tasty fish began in the 1800’s until canary rockfish were declared overfished in 2000 when it was discovered that rockfish had declined 70% since the 1960’s. Fish and Wildlife submitted a petition to have 14 rockfish species listed under the Endangered Species Act (eventually, all these were not listed). Enter science-based studies of them, plus just plain asking fishermen “where are you catching canary rockfish so we can have you fish elsewhere”. Fishing rules were changed, different gear was introduced and suddenly, in half the time it was thought it hopefully might happen, we have plenty of rockfish.
My second story was about another Northwest creature, one that has adapted to its environment in a beautiful way, but hiding underground from its predators.
A delicate flower-like anemone that is actually an animal. Yes, an animal that you’ll find just beneath your keel in sheltered mud-bottomed bays. While it looks more like a tube worm, this creature is actually related to jellyfish. Confusing, but to me it just shows the complexity of the underwater world we rarely see, and why I enjoy writing this page. These animals appear to have stout tubes below their tentacles waving in currents as they search for bits of food to snag, but they are actually soft and vulnerable. To protect themselves, they burrow into the mud and generate a fibrous string-like material they weave around themselves, almost like they’re knitting a sock. This can extend from above the surface down beside them into the mud as deep as three feet, a woven structure they live in, safe from predators. When one threatens, the anemone quickly pulls itself down into the protective tube.
While many anemones have stout fans of tentacles and large bodies holding them up into the current, this species relies on the mud substrate and a house of its own making. When its main predator, the giant nudibranch, grazes on the anemone’s tentacles, it also lays its eggs right on the outside of the anemone’s tube, putting the young’s first meal close at hand. You might think this would be the end of the anemone, but nature has evolved tentacles aplenty so both species survive. The anemone commonly lives up to 10 years and often congregates in colonies that resemble flower-filled meadows, the tenticles waving as blossoms in a gentle breeze. Flowers they are definitely not, animals are certainly are.
And here’s my original sketch before the color was added. Notice the unfinished part on the right, just part of the process.
I’ve written for this magazine for over a decade now. When it was a sailing journal, they used my art on the covers and published many of my longer stories. It’s a broader publication now, trying to a bigger audience, and it still gives me pleasure to contribute. It was sold to the Port Townsend Northwest Maritime Center a couple of years ago, bringing it closer to my home port where I continue to sail and kayak. It’s a meaningful bit of life to me, experiencing nature here at home and then writing and painting it for others to enjoy.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Please click the image so it enlarges in your browser. The painting is 12 feet wide, the deer life-sized, so it’ll take a bigger screen than your phone to see it.
This is soon to be installed at Moran State Park on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound. It’s going to be high atop Mount Constitution, almost 2400 feet above the sea level. A new visitor center there will feature this large set of paintings as the main exhibit. I painted the background, all the art in the circles and deer separately. It’s all being fabricated in high-pressure laminate so it’s tourist-proof. EDX, the fine exhibit company I work with in Seattle did the design, text and all the rest for Washington State Parks, and Beth Gibson at EDX handled me – never an easy thing.
With this installation, I’ll soon have 18 exhibit paintings on or near Orcas Island. Another five are on San Juan Island next door, and two are soon to be installed on Sucia Island, a remote offshore park just to the north – wayside panels about salmon recovery. I’m thrilled with all this, because I spent much of the 1980’s living aboard my little boat right here and know the place well. It’s like I’m giving back for some very fine life experiences I had in that area, and especially Sucia Island, a really special place.
The strange deer! Because of the isolation of Orcas Island, the Columbian Black-tailed Deer that live there have a closed genetic pool (it’s an island), and so have evolved into what’s called a pie-bald form. These deer feature odd unpigmented skin areas, white skin and fur, but they are also smaller and somewhat oddly shaped. It wasn’t an easy subject to paint, but this little guy will be life-sized in the final installation. I took the most interesting features of several and stuck them together.
Spread across the background of Mount Constitution are a dozen smaller circle paintings with the real interpretation, stories about the geology, orca whales, forests and marshes. These had to be interesting paintings but not too complex as to be confusing. This one is about the mountain ‘balds’, areas of open prairie, gacial boulders and few trees.
All this was great fun for me. I love the challenge of painting big walls with lots of details all having various stories packed into one wall.
Plan a trip to Orcas next summer and see it for yourselves. Say hi to the piebald deer.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Yellowthroat warblers 1983. Now in Wellington, New Zealand, Melanie Murray
THIS, is just a bit of going down memory lane. It’s also a chapter of how I got here today after painting for over 50 years.
I receive a lot of emails from people who own my old stuff. Sometimes they just let me know, others want to know how much it’s worth (it’s worth what it’s worth to you) or who gets it in the divorce settlement. Some of these I honestly don’t remember even painting, like this one. It now resides in Wellington, New Zealand and the owner, Melanie Murray has no idea how it got there. It was in a store, she bought it, looked me up. It was painted 37 years ago. I think it looks pretty good, considering, and so does the frame and mat (which I recognize, too, but also don’t remember). The info on the back reveals more. That’s my handwriting, my rubber stamp. I mis-named the painting on the back compared with the front (laugh), and it was painted when I was 38. It was the 209th painting of that year. That’s about one per day, seven days a week, and if you want to know how to paint, that’s the secret right there! You just PAINT!
And if you do that, you’ll forget some of the ones you did, or maybe a few hundred – or thousand.
Trinity Alps of California, 1982, owned by Sue Shakespeare
Below is another painting I received this last year. It DO remember this as it shows a favorite place. I backpacked here often, but I honestly don’t remember which mountain or which lake it is, doesn’t matter anyway. Both of these are opaque watercolor, a sort of kid’s poster paint that creates both vibrant colors and deep washes. At 38 years old, it still looks pretty good.
And two more from the mid-1880 that arrived in emails. The boat was my own, the first big boat I had that I restored and sailed to Alaska. Seeing this little painting caught my breath, mainly for seeing the boat again. For some years, I’d spend summers up British Columbia’s Inside Passage painting, sailing, painting – and then mailing these back to my gallery in California. By fall, they’d all be sold – so I never saw them again. Except this one when it was emailed to me. It was likely painted on the cockpit table, drawn while sitting in the dingy floating around while “October” was at anchor. The painting says 1984, San Diego, showing I sailed thousands of miles aboard that boat, a floating studio. I was painting a diary, and then sold the pages as soon as I made them!
And finally, this old historic barn that was painted in 1977 in the Eastern Sierra Mountains of California. Still loved by the family who bought it back then, just another generation going forward. At that time, the Eastern Sierra was full of these hay barns, hand-made with split wood. Many were on their last legs and were great subjects to paint. I had met a very good painter who knew opaque watercolor inside out, Sherry Gribben, who had won the Death Valley Mule Days art show. We painted together for a bit and I learned much from her. I don’t have many mentors, but Sherry certainly was one, as brief as it was. She’d laugh at my lame attempts, but I look at this painting now and think it’s not too bad. Really.
I freely admit it, I can’t make big mileages hiking if I stop to do these paintings. I’m fast, but not THAT fast, so, I’ve learned to shorten my goals, keep it realistic – and enjoy myself. For this, I get art to take home, my old body thanks me for slowing down, and by taking care I get to come back again and again to do this. And one more perk that is the difference between hiking and making art. I get to actually LOOK at the landscape, see how it’s built and has evolved. I see and understand how the flowers grow beside that dainty little brook where it spills out of the lake. Or how the trail crews have built a little path of rocks hauled over from a scree pile possibly 50 years ago. Putting in mileage sure doesn’t get you this close connection – but making trail art does.
Fleabane-beside-the-creek
These paintings represent places that moved me enough to stop and draw. On this trip, fourth of the season, I didn’t take my paints, but instead just a pencil, long point pencil sharpener and some water color paper. The color was added back in my studio, and I loved reliving the trip in this way. It took less art-making time on the trail, yet provided a ‘second adventure’ for me here at home reliving the same places again. I recommend it, really!
Sunset-trail-toward-the-peak
In this painting, I liked the way the soft light from distant fires softened up the sky, made companion colors in the willows fit perfectly as they yellowed for fall. The fleabane flowers beside the creek were about spent, with only a few yellow and white petals remaining – but it was a beautiful little place with water gurgling by. Willows, their leaves chomped on here and there by the black-tailed deer, were sporting galls and little caterpillar cocoons awaiting first freeze so they could spend their winter safe under snow on the ground. The place looked felt very soft and settled. Both these paintings were created at places where I was also tired of walking, so it was good timing to take time, calm down, make some art.
As I hiked along and came into a big meadow, the vertical peaks of the Olympics really contrasted my view. Flat and stable, then vertical and jagged, rising fast and steep. That’s what these Olympic Mountains are, really steep. The Dungeness River starts up here and drops 7600 feet in only 28 miles to the Pacific Ocean, one of the steepest watersheds in the country. Ah, but those first dozen miles at the top, they’re just pure magic. One of the side secondary rivers begins here in this valley, surrounded by snowy peaks and a chain of lakes. Not a single lowland trail comes here, they’re all high subalpine or high-elevation trails that drop down into this magic place, giving it a Shangri-La feeling bounded by barriers on all sides.
Mountain-Gentian
Gentian : gen shenGentians are fall-blooming plants of subalpine wet meadows. They’re one of my favorite flowers because they start blooming as summer is fading, being downright gutsy about their timing. They grow in clusters from a solitary root, and are at first tightly zipped up, a dark midnight blue that is truly rare in color. I don’t know another alpine flower with this amazingly vibrant blue. As they open, the insides begin to show lighter shades of cobalt, and again this is color not often seen in the wild, anywhere. They’re spectacular, to say the least I can about a plant that’s learned to flower just before first frost. What timing!
Orange Mountain-dandelion
On the other side of the color spectrum, a nose-up look at these plants that were upslope and out in the open from the gentians showed an orange mixed with white, just a tad of white to tone it down. And a little bee getting a meal. This was an upclose and personal painting – the flowers are only two inches wide, max. Orange mountain-dandelion has a hyphen, meaning it’s not a real dandelion, but one that looks similar to it’s backyard relatives. I found these in a much drier place than the gentian but still beside the trail. Both give great color to a drying meadow in late August.
My Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo was a bit too spacious for just me, but I luxuriously lounged in it, spread my stuff all over the place like I lived there. I guess I did. It’s an amazingly big tent for its 45 ounces of weight. This tent, and the other ultralight gear is what’s getting me into these places these days, and allowing me to do it in comfort.
At this campsite, an outcropping of boulders provided some really good reflections in the little lake, and so a painting was needed. Oh, I could have just turned the paper upside down and drawn it a second time, but that’s cheating, and not very accurate. Beside me while I drew, this Olympic chipmunk joined me. The Olympic Peninsula has several endemic mammals that live only here. This is one, and possibly my favorite. It’s small, even looks small with its short nose. This moment, with the chippy and me, my pencil and paper, are what makes my hiking complete – close connections with nature that will remain in my mind throughout the winter.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
These two stories were published back in early summer in 48 North magazine. I always give the magazine first showing, wait a bit and then publish here, too. This first story was about a rather amazing little bird that migrates 38,000 miles each year, circumnavigating the Pacific, and in early summer they stop by here. Take a minute and read the brief little story after the paintings. Times are tough for wildlife, but this guy makes me want to make sure they continue their solitary lives in a healthy way. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but this means: VOTE! All of us, you and me, and these little birds will have a better chance if you do. For the first time in my long life, I see an election that is truly critical to our continued existence.
Published in a magazine that has sailing stories, I wrote about what you’d see offshore west of my home in Port Townsend, Washington. I’ve been out there and seen these little birds myself.
I hear you’re voyaging to Barkley Sound or Down-the-Outside this summer! When you’re out there, keep a sharp watch for this little crow-sized bird soaring past, sailing along like a miniature albatross. If you see one, you’ll be getting to know a REAL voyager. These small birds fly with quick stiff wingbeats and soar low over waves, using the uplifting power of air coming off the swells to expend little energy to keep aloft. They need that, because these oceanic aviators go astounding distances. Each year, they fly from nesting burrows or rock crevices on islands around New Zealand, Australia and South America, and head north, following a figure-8 pattern. Passing Japan in April, they head to the arctic and then pass us in the Northwest on their way back home.
In all, that’s 38,000 miles, or 1.5times the distance around the Earth. (Only arctic terns make a longer flight each year.) While doing this, they only rarely meet other shearwaters, and yet there are 20 -30 million of them doing this – and there’s a second race in the Atlantic flying a similar route. Imagine! When they all get back home for nesting season in the Southern Hemisphere, they get together, sometimes in massive flocks (probably to catch up on things). Watch for the silver wing flashes and a dull brown coloration – stiff wings and a plump body. Shearwaters are proof to me that, while we’re generally busy goofing things up, there are creatures out there that are pretty much oblivious to our presence.
Tracks in the Sand
This second story, published this summer, isn’t about the wildlife as much as it’s about the tracks left by them. You don’t need to ‘see’ the otter to know it was just there, ambling down the same beach you’re on now. And, if you know what you’re looking at, you realize it might not be an otter, but something else. The tracks in the illustration were life-size.
Here’s the story that went with the paintings:
Land your boat on a sandy beach and you’ll probably soon see animal tracks in the sand. The most common are dog, bobcat, mountain lion, river otter and people. If you’re lucky, it’s a mix of all four. River otters remind me of an extremely hairy dachshund, same size (to 30 pounds and 3 to 4 feet including tail. Their fur is long and thick, keeping them warm swimming in our cold waters. The long and strong trail helps propel them like a sculling oar, but they are also at home on land and can run up to 15 miles an hour. I’ve been cornered in a parking lot by an entire family of them.
The tracks in the sand you see could very well be river otters, but not sea otters that rarely come ashore and aren’t common in the Salish Sea anyway. Look for details. The hind feet show a single claw apart from the other four. Front feet show all five like a dog. All will show front claws and you might even see the connecting web between the toes. Dogs show claws, but not the separated hind toe. Cougars have huge prints like big dogs, but don’t show claws. Bobcat track: only 1.5” across and only four toes show. Here’s the thing to remember. It matters little that you actually SAW the critter that made the track, because you saw proof it was here. I’d say that’s good enough.
I have a long history with 48 North magazine and their parent organization, The Northwest Maritime Center, based in Port Townsend, WA. In the 90’s and early 2000s, I was on the board of the Wooden Boat Foundation, Nancy was store chandler selling all manner of wooden boat equipment – and now here I am, still plugging away at making art for the same group – but these days it’s published in their magazine. I enjoy these brief monthly forays into aquatic nature. I learn a lot.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
Click on the image and see it enlarged in your browser. Just too much going on in the drawing to miss out.
Glacier National Park concept 2 in design
Recently, a friend asked me if I still enjoyed making art. Strange question for me – it’s simply what I do. Glacier National Park: this project might appear daunting as hell, but, for me, it’s a real kick. So yes, I still enjoy making art – especially if it looks hopeless and then I save it from crashing. It’s just never ‘safe’.
This painting will eventually become the back of the new Glacier National Park map, the one you get at the gate along with the other 3.3 million visitors each year. It’s the 7th park I’ve painted these for and none have been easy and safe, not a single one. I know Glacier pretty well. I spent a summer there decades ago painting and hiking, but not well enough to just start drawing.
Glacier concept 1
Above is the original concept, with a view of the foreground showing an alpine ecosystem, bears, goats, sheep, marmots and pikas. Beyond that, the scene opens up in a giant oblique aerial view. Easy? Not so much!
And then this: we were supposed to meet there with park staff from Glacier and Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia in August, but the Blackfeet Tribe closed all park entrances on the east side because of COVID. So, gone was any idea of actually getting first-hand knowledge. I did what I like to do, I just make this all up, just started drawing and out came a pretty acceptable painting design.
Here’s version 2, getting it defined.
Glacier National Park concept 2
Then a conference call with park staff happened and we decided to add a living glacier on the right, more glaciers in the middle mountain which is now much bigger and closer.
Glacier concept 3
And I think we’re closing in on how it will look. Using a bunch of web photos from the park’s Flicker account, and the park map (below), it’s feeling like it actually might work. Stay tuned for more as this project develops. I’m thrilled it actually might look like something.
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In the 1970’s, I hiked into Caribou Lakes Basin in Northern California’s Trinity Alps. It’s a place of great beauty, stark white Sierra granite and rare plants that mix Pacific Coastal and Cascade ecosystems together in a jumbled profusion – the most conifer species together in one place in North America. That evening, I camped near another hiker, an older gentleman who was comfortably stretched out on a flat shelf of granite above the lake. (I was about 28 years old and everyone with white hair looked old to me.) It was a bit of a shock to realize he was without a tent or stove – or even a sleeping bag. I remember actually being a little worried about him, then realized he was traveling as light as one could in those days. He knew exactly what he was doing, much more than I did. After more consideration, I realized he wouldn’t have been there in the first place had he been carrying the normal 40+ lbs. we all struggled with in those days. A big smile was on his face, I remember that, and he looked to have less than half of 40 lbs. spread around him. No wonder he was smiling!
His main equipment seemed to be just a big tarp, and after his cold dinner he simple rolled everything, including himself, inside the tarp and spent the night poking his head out to star-watch, decades before Dark Skies became a ‘thing’ in Parks. I remember thinking he was like a big burrito, rolled in that tarp, and wondered if the bears liked Mexican. The next day, he told me he was in his 70’s and was determined not to stop hiking, experiencing pristine and untrammeled nature and that it kept him healthy.
Today, I am that guy!
Larry Eifert 74th Birthday
The Addition of Art
Very early on I learned to carry paper and pencil, watercolors and brushes into the wild. Little paintings that became the result piled up at home – so I started selling them, and all these years later I can say I’ve actually made a good living painting nature. It takes thousands of paintings to become an artist, and, well, that’s just what I did, one little effort at a time. The ah-hah moment came in the 80’s when I realized I could make art in national parks, and park staff might find a place for them actually in the park.
Early morning pond ice at 6000 feet in August, Olympic National Park.
As the decades passed, the outdoor gear companies caught up with me, and my tent, bag, stove and all the rest now weighs about as much as the older gent’s tarp – yes, the tent, bag, pack and all the rest weigh in at about 25 lbs, including the painting materials. What that means is that besides me, many more women and older hikers are out there now, and with some physical luck, I’ll bet you I can continue to do this into my 80’s. These days I don’t go as far, or as high, but still I get to meaningful and stunningly-wild places all the same.
Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo, my 2-pound tent in action.
So why go to all this trouble with the art-thing? Why go to wild country and take paper and pencil, maybe some paints. Wouldn’t it be easier just to pull out my phone and take pictures like everyone else? See it, point and tap. My short answer is, yes, of course it’s easier to take a photo. I do this too. But this art-thing is vastly beyond the level of hastily recording your journey. It’s not just about holding up a plastic box in front of you, shielding your eyes from what you might actually be seeing and looking into a little TV. It’s about YOU actually seeing what you’re looking at and seeing it better. A lot better!
When I make a little sketch, it takes some studying.
You don’t just bang it out and run down the trail, and that’s why most of these are either early morning or late afternoon paintings made around camp. Those contemplative times mean I can stand there and ask myself just how does that mountain ridgeline go? How are the trees in front of it highlighting certain areas of the mountains behind them? What about the foreground where there’s a little path, maybe that might be moved over a bit to make a better composition. In fact, maybe I can move the mountains a bit left to highlight some details I like. Oh, you sure can’t do THAT with your phone camera, can you? It’s a clear day, totally blue skies? Maybe I could add some clouds to make it more complex and interesting, just a few flicks of the pencil and I have mountains tearing at passing clouds, making movement and drama. You see, it’s not just about making art from what you see, it’s about designing nature to look even better than it is – and these places are fairly wonderful already.
Meadows Camp
I usually start these little paintings by just taking a moment – and looking, really looking at what I got all enthrawled with in the first place. What did I think might make it a nice piece of art? I try not to design the entire thing in my mind, just get a sense of what’s out there. Maybe it’s some fish swimming below me in a clear pool, a bird going about it’s business, the way two ridgelines come together. The painting above shows some of this, the way the two mountains lean inwards toward the picture’s center. Then the trail angles away and upwards towards the same spot. It’s a way to bring the wondering eyeballs towards the tent, the center-of-interest where you want viewers to end up. I wanted them to imagine that THEY, the viewers are walking up the trail towards camp.
American Dipper
American Dippers are one of my favorite creatures to paint. These little gray birds make their lives along only the clearest and coldest mountains streams, and even nest behind waterfalls where the little growing family is constantly wet, or very nearly so. Given a sharp elbow bend in the stream, they will always fly over water the long way instead of short-cutting it through forest. But here’s the best part. They make their living by walking and flying underwater, looking for insects, small fish and caddisfly larva. For me, an artist-naturalist, they hold fascination because of their homes, maybe more than the bird itself. In this painting, I carefully left the area behind the dipper so the dull-gray bird would stand out better on it’s perch rock. In reality, a second after I drew it, the bird jumped into the pool and vanished as it made it’s way in search of dinner. Yes, they dip up and down when rock-sitting.
Royal Creek – Glacier Flour Blue
That evening, I watched the colors of the setting sun high overhead and beyond the mountains. I had lost the sun an hour earlier down in this canyon, but had already picked out a ‘sitting rock’ for morning coffee, a Starbucks instant backpackers seem to prefer – me too. As I looked at the sky overhead, I noticed the silhouetted trees arched over the top of me. Of course, in reality they were actually straight vertical, but I made this painting look like they were arched over me, closing me in like a shelter. For clarity and design, I left out about half of them and focused on just two for details. Did I get the point across?
Looking Up – It’s a Glorious Sunset
I should probably mention here that this year Six Moon Designs sponsor me by passing over some of their gear to try. I feel good that, at 74, I have such a company willing to help me continue my life of hiking, making it easier to get to these places. The painting below is their Lunar Solo, a beautiful little single-hiker tent that’s making these trips a joy. That’s a single pole holding it up. The entrance side can be opened wide for an 8-foot view, sort of like a picture window. I love to sit inside with both sides opened up. This evening I sat there and watched the sun set as I drew this painting almost to completion, adding my water jug, stove and coffee mug in the foreground to give it scale and a connection to me. Those things were placed there at the end once I sketched the rest of it. In front, the huge meadow allowed me to watch wildlife appear at the end of a hot day, but by the time the deer showed up, the painting was finished. Does it feel like you’re there ready to crawl into your sleeping bag? I hope so.
Sunset inside the tent
I truly believe that making simple expressions on paper can enhance a hike anywhere, and give you something solid to remember it with.
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.
This painting has been a work in progress for long enough, so I thought I should offer it here to end my fussing with it.
These little seasonal streams are everywhere in the Northwest, and you can’t hike too far without seeing a few. I like them, each one different, and American Dippers also like them possibly because they’re less dangerous than big and more powerful waterfalls that can crush little birds. I read that harlequin ducks who share these same habitats have been found to have many healed broken bones from crashing about underwater in these streams. It’s probably the same for smaller dippers.
I like the textures in this painting, so maybe that’s why I kept it around, making it more textural, then less, then – oh just sell it. Like the painting process, nature is messy, until you understand it, and in this case the way ferns and saxifrige leaves all jumble together, each staking claim on a momentary bit of sunlight streaming through the canopy. When the light finally does penetrate all the way to the forest floor, it’s like a brilliant spotlight is highlighting an actor in a play.
This painting is acrylic on board and is 11″ x 14″.
I have a scan that can make a high-quality print up to 32″ x 42″ on canvas.
And currently, it’s framed as you see it here under glass in a wood frame. Outside dimensions are 20″ x 24″. It’s acrylic on board, so it might not need the glass.
Dipper-Misty-Waterfal-framed
Price for this painting FRAMED as you see it is $295, about 40% less than gallery price. Shipping would add a bit more.
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Making Art – Part of Salmon Restoration
While the words are only in placeholder form, I wanted to show off this new painting. It’s going to be installed as a public wayside exhibit at the Smith Island Restoration Project on the Snohomish River Estuary, north of Seattle. This project has been going of for years, heavy equipment removing old dikes, building others and generally restoring a vast area of junk yards and farmlands to wetlands so that it becomes salmon habitat. It cost over a billion dollars and I’m proud to have been involved in a tiny way with my painting.
Here’s how it started on this painting. I had photo references that showed me how it looks at low tide. They gave me much latitude on my design and how it looks and feels, so I made it more of a dramatic sunset image. Below is how a corner of the place actually looks, a brackish slough, perfect for young salmon. I made some basic sketches and just started painting. I imagined a mid-tide level so I could show the fish.
Smith Island Slough
You’ll notice the great-blue heron on the left suddenly got bigger as it gained a more important place in the story.
Closeup scans of the left and right sides show the level of detail.
Below, I’m closing in on the final painting before I added the insets and text blocks.
The final installation will be 48″ x 24″. I pleased that people will be looking at this for decades as the place grows into itself again. A few years ago it was a landscape that’s unrecognizable now. I remember part of it was a junkyard and tire dump that caught fire awhile ago, burning for weeks. I could see the smoke miles away. The absolutely lowest level of what we can do to wreck a natural place – it’s no wonder salmon are in trouble. Now, there are salmon and herons, kingfishers and Nootka roses in bloom (or soon will be).
Thanks for this commission go to Snohomish County, WA and Gretchen Glaub who worked with me to make it happen.
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