Last week we took our little ferry (locally named Bob, because that’s what it does best) over to Whidbey Island, then drove inland a couple of hours to the North Cascades and Mount Baker. This trail is so high it was still spring, with lupine, columbine and paintbrush everywhere. At one point, there was enough fireweed in bloom to make a scree slope completely magenta. We crossed a side creek by hopping rocks, and I stopped to take a reference snapshot of this scene looking upstream into the glacial bowl. The contrast between blue-sky reflection in the foreground, and the yellow sun-bounced light off distant trees makes for a very interesting scene, doesn’t it?
These little digital cameras have really improved how I can do these paintings. Before, I’d have to stop, pull apart my pack to get at my 35mm, go back and figure the shot out – and then wouldn’t know until I processed the film if the stuff was any good. Now, I pull the camera from my pocket and simply take a bunch of shots – and review them as I go (just like you do too). What’s interesting is that my painting process is still the same. The painting, the end result of all this, always looks very different from the beginning reference shot. I guess I’m not really trying to improve on nature, just rearrange it.
We liked this area so much, we’re going back this weekend for some more trail-miles. Might even result in another painting!
This painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed. The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. Email us for details. This one isn’t going on the main website, but will be only on the blog.
Thanks for reading this week. Larry Eifert
Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints and other stuff.
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Sorry to say I somehow hit the “send” button instead of the “save” button. I just had ‘words’ with my computer!
So, here’s the rest of the story.
The Marin Conservation League is celebrating their 75th anniversary, and they wanted me to create a 24″ x 36″ panel on Angel Island commemorating this. Angel Island State Park is on the north side of San Francisco Bay. I once anchored there and walked the trails. It’s a great place, and thanks to the foresight of Caroline Livermore and others, I got to do that.
And now, almost 30 years later, I was able to tell that story of how the park came to be.
The back story is another matter. Since I couldn’t actually go to the location, I had to cook up a bit of art for this, using web photos and some artistic license. That’s the bottom piece of art that’s 36″ wide. The photo of Caroline Livermore was another issue. The only photo provided was a blurry low resolution black and white snapshot. I took this into Photoshop, blew it up, printed it out and then painted it with colored pencils. Who knows what color that dress actually was, but now it’s red. I think it works pretty well.
Sorry you got two of these emails. Technology runamuck!
Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert
Click here to see a bunch of other outside exhibit panels.
Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints and other stuff.
Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently doing.
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.
Point Wilson Lighthouse is on the north end of Port Townsend. It’s an old fort too, Fort Worden State Park, where all manner of music and art happens, the largest poetry press outside of New York (that won a Pulitzer this year), a woodworking school and a bunch of other stuff that goes on year-round. I played a mess of blues a few years ago at the Blues Camp, but, it’s the lighthouse that continually draws me in. Maybe it’s because it’s also that living place where the waters of Puget Sound and the great Straits of Juan deFuca meet, a wild and crazy place of currents, wind and waves – and I always like being on the edge of something.
Here’s the point when I sailed by it awhile ago. What a different scene when you’re at the mercy of wind and waves! Tourist kayakers regularly get caught here on a big ebb and swept out into the Straits, causing all manner of Coast Guard rescue actions and heroic photos in the papers.
SOLD
This painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $150 unframed. The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. Email us for details. This one isn’t going on the main website .
Our web host has been messing with our shopping cart this last week. You’d think a company the size of France could figure this out, but not these days. And, I admit it, painted this image last year, but I just had to put a blog entry about it now because the Olympic Peninsula recently got a bit more crowded.
Fishers had been extinct on the Olympic Peninsula for decades, having been trapped out of the entire state of Washington for their plush fir. Last year, Olympic National Park commissioned this painting to coincide with the release of the first groups of fishers seen around here in 80 years, animals the Park resource people brought down from Vancouver Island. The painting was used for a bunch of interpretation, educating everyone about the event. It was fun to attempt to paint something I knew little about. This house cat-sized critter is between 2 and 4 feet in length including a giant tail. All four feet have five toes with retractable claws, and because they can rotate their hind paws 180 degrees, they can grasp limbs and climb down trees head first. So, unlike similar martens or weasels, this allows them to hunt birds in trees.
Disregard the arrow! It was a proofing issue.
So, it’s one thing to reintroduce animals into the wild, but it’s another to keep them there. It appears to be happening. The park set up an automatic camera in the backcountry near a female fisher’s den in the Elwha Valley. It showed the mother taking four babies, known as kits, out of the den, which is located fairly high up in a rotting snag. The animal appears to be moving her young to a new den, presumably closer to the ground so the kits won’t have far to fall as they grow.
I really hope that in a few years there might be fishers all over the Olympic Peninsula, maybe even passing through my backyard (but that’s a stretch).
Currently you’ll have to email if you want something, but we now have museum-quality prints available of the fisher painting available here of three sizes for between $39.95 matted and $239.95 fully framed.
Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here
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This week, I was going to send out a painting I just finished of Sol Duc Falls, but I received so much good mail last time about the saga of Rumpy, our old boat, I decided to tell you about the boat we now have (another art project). It’s a pretty interesting tale, and the past few days I’m giving her fresh paint in the boat yard, only a few hundred yards from Rumpy.
We bought Sea Witch 10 years ago, soon after giving up Rumpy, because, well, you just can’t be Boatless Near Seattle. Built in 1939 in Tacoma, Sea Witch was designed by Ed Monk Sr, probably the most famous boat designer in this part of the country, and in fact Rumpy was designed by him too. For the boat’s first 25 years, things went along in fairly normal style until the Bailey family bought her in the 1960’s. Five kids, dog, cat and both parents Jo and John would all stuff themselves aboard this little 30′ boat and sail off for the summer. According to the kids (who are all adults now), things never went all that swimmingly, but something must have clicked because most of them still love to sail and the boat lives on in iconic family history.
Then things got serious! In the 1980’s Jo went started writing sailing stories and cruising books, and because of this, just about everyone around the Northwest knows about Sea Witch. I had even purchased a signed book with Sea Witch on the cover back then and still have that copy. Jo continues to write today and occasionally includes Sea Witch in her tales.
So a decade ago it was our turn with the old girl. She needed a complete restoration which took me several years – and was quite some job. All this is well documented with scads of photos on our website if you’re interested (click here), but what I want to really show is that this boat and its dingy (shore boat) has since become the subject of an entire portfolio of my paintings. Not only that, but I’ve also written Sea Witch stories for the Seattle Times and supplied covers and stories for Seattle’s 48 North magazine. This beautiful and graceful shape, a classic example of form and function combined, doesn’t have a bad view. This is not so with modern boats sporting reverse transoms and plastic hulls. Sea Witch not only sails well but is a joy to portray. Like the graceful curve of a beautiful woman’s back, this boat’s shape gives me great pleasure to look at. For that matter, she’s a joy to slap paint on too.
Here’s a favorite image of mine showing where she lives. If you look closely, you’ll see two river otters on the dock. While they’re cute, these little bandits come on board and leave amazing messes you can’t even imagine. I was sure if I painted this as homage, they’d leave me alone. Hah!
So here’s the pitch. If I sell a couple of prints or a painting this week, I can pay for the haulout and maybe a can of paint – and one of you could own a piece of Sea Witch. (maybe that’s too shameless a pitch.)
We have eight-color Giclee prints either unframed or framed, between $39.95 and $239.95 available of this painting and the original painting is still available for $700 unframed. Email us.
Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here
Here’s our main website address where lots is going on.
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us. I promise I won’t be so wordy next time.
Rumpy in the glory years when these two artists owned her.
Art comes in all shapes and sizes, and over the years I’ve been involved in the making of a whole bunch of it. This week, I got to save a piece of art both Nancy and I once joyfully owned – so we’re passing the story along to all of you.
On Halloween of 1994, Nanc and I bought this boat, an iconic 1941 45-foot wooden tri-cabin power boat in Seattle and brought it over to the Olympic Peninsula. At 76,000lbs, it was a handfull! We wanted to get into Port Townsend, but the marina was full so we settled for a more remote yet very scenic small bay and community of Port Ludlow. Many of you remember those years when a marina slip number as our mailing address. As the years went by, we rebuilt and restored Rumpuckorori (or Rumpy as we called her) to a very beautiful craft – really, a functional piece of art. For us, it was home. We weathered storms at the dock when we thought the marina was going to break up, we cruised up the Inside Passage into British Columbia, and even lived in the boatyard when bottom work needed to be done. In effect, we created a liveable piece of wooden art!
When we bought the “Lodge” in Port Townsend in 2000, we couldn’t also own this huge boat, so we sold her to a retired guy who promised to keep her going. Well, we’re sorry to say he didn’t! After a few years of simply hiring out all the work, he gave up and the boat hasn’t moved in years. Paint began to peel, rot came a’creeping, fresh water got in the bilge and all manner of bad things began to happen. Old wooden boats need paint and varnish or they die pretty quickly. Friends told us to not go and look, but we did anyway and occasional visits left us shaking our heads in sorrow. I predicted that if nothing was done, Rumpy would die by 2010 or so.
Then, two months ago I received a call from the owner pleading for help. A month ago I met two very nice Canadians with some energy and skills looking for just this kind of boat. Last Sunday morning in fog and drizzle, I helped move Rumpy to dry storage in Port Townsend to begin reconstruction – and a new life.
I think there’s a longer story here. By doing this I feel like we helped continue all the energy and money, frustrations and good times of a great many people, from the past builders and former owners, to countless shipwrights that have ever worked on her during her 68 years – to us! It’s a connection I’m not willing to just let slide out of my life for good, and in a few years, I’ll let you all know how it all worked out with Rumpy’s next chapter. Shipwrights (who are true artists of wood and metal) have already come forward with offers to help.
It doesn’t seem to matter to me that I won’t own her and won’t get to motor out to a little cove for the evening, but it does matter that I know the boat is still alive, still a piece of functional art and still making someone happy. Life doesn’t get any better, does it?
Thanks for reading this week. Larry Last Sunday morning: Rumpy on the way to a new life. Thanks, Joe, who followed the boat in case it sank enroute.
If you’d like to see some of the paintings or Giclee prints of Sea Witch, our current boat we’re restored,click here.
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I’m attempting a new and “improved” emailer and I’m a bit worried to hit the send button. If it’s botched, don’t give up on me.
Several have asked if I’m still painting wildlife as stand-alone images. Of course! I’m still hooked on doing these single-focus themes – sort of a wildlife moment.
Here’s a new effort along those lines. This little winter wren and its stump are soon to be on an interpretive panel for Olympic National Park. We have these little birds right here in the meadow below my studio, so studying the real deal was pretty easy. So was the stump. I used a broken and leaning mossy log down by the compost pile as the model.
Winter wrens are about the size of my big toe. They have amazing courage (or stupidity) and come boldly out of the ferns to confront you trespassing in their territory. They’ll let go a stream of sizzling, bubbling chatter that goes on for ten seconds or so, possibly a rapid series of threats in wren-lingo. Recently, I had one fly from a nearby fern frond and land on the brim of my cap. As it landed I could hear the flutter of its little wings, like the sound of a deck of cards being shuffled. To them, that must sound very loud, like an airplane propeller.
Sorry, but this painting already belongs to the National Park Service who commissioned me for it.
Link here to many other wildlife prints on our website.
Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here
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Thanks for reading, now I’m going to start painting. Larry
Tolowa Dunes Stewards funded this painting for interpretive and educational efforts. Tolowa Dunes State Park is a 5,000-acre California State Park located on California’s far North Coast near Crescent City. Lake Earl and Lake Tolowa are there, as well as a significant portion of the relatively large coastal plain around it. As one local scientist said: “The Lake Earl sand dunes and wetlands represent one of the richest hotspots for bio-diversity of both plants and animals found along the West Coast of the United States.”
I’ve spent many years living just south of this area and know it well – so this was a fun project. Just to the north on the Smith River, I painted my very first large-scale interpretive mural back in the 1980’s for Redwood National Park. That original is still at the Crescent City Visitor Center, and the exhibit still at Hiouchi Visitor Center up on the river. It’ll probably outlive me!
So here’s the sketch.
It was a speedy one, even for me. Because of a funding deadline, the painting was finished in less than a week – but then you guys probably knew that. It’s painted with acrylic on paper board and is about 40″ wide.
Click here to see lots of other national and state park interpetive art on our website.
Some of you have asked where the full website is with all the puzzles, posters and park exhibit stuff. Just click here.
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We’ve been away for two weeks, so no posts for awhile. We were in Hilo Hawaii, better known as Hi-Town, enjoying sea turtles, Coqui frogs, volcanoes and the most interesting blend of people, music and art we’ve seen in awhile. The Big Island has turned into quite some place.
Meanwhile, the summer visitors are a’comin, and this year’s Olympic National Park’s Bugler cover is a painting I recently finished of the Sol Duc Valley for Olympic National Park, northwest of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. It was commissioned for a roadside wayside exhibit, but these paintings often end up doing double duty. Now, I’m pleased to say that, for the second year in a row, the park has used my work on the cover of the park’s summer newspaper (that’s the giveaway publication you often get at most national park’s gate or visitor centers). I heard that the initial spring printing was about 100,000 copies.
Of course there’s a back story:
Here’s one of the many Sol Duc River reference photos I took to get the painting going.
And here’s the draft sketch for this painting. You can see the exhibit text blocks that will eventually overlay the painting, which never makes it easy for the painter. I have to not only create a good painting that might be used for, say, the Bugler cover, but also allow areas for text when it’s used for a roadside exhibit. After decades of doing this, I guess it’s just all in a day’s work – but I continue to be very interested in the serious challenge of making it all work up into a good artistic work of art and not just a photo-like exhibit. Some work better than others.
If you’re interested in more of the interpretive art I’ve completed, click here to see lots of other national and state park art on our website.
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This story is in 48-North this month, the best sailing magazine in the Northwest. I thought everyone might enjoy it. I tend to write and illustrate short stories much like my mom did – must be some genetic-thing repeating itself after 50 years. Once you’ve read the story, click the link below to find out a bit more about this interesting woman. (We’re still working on the content,) Virginia’s site.
An Ancient and Respected Art Story and illustrations by Larry Eifert
Varnish Day! Sounds like something important, like Election Day, but that’s just the day I’d picked for an afternoon bout of keepin’ the ol’ boat goin’. Old wooden boats are not unlike a good partner in life; they need attention occasionally. I kept a careful log last year and it worked out that the dreaded m-word (maintenance) was in play about 12% of the total time I spent aboard Sea Witch. Not that I mind it in the least, because it’s always a pure joy to make something of quality shiny again.
So, there I was. The block sander had made its rounds; the vacuum had cleaned up the mess, followed by the tack rag. I was ready to uncork the can of varnish that, since the Bush Years, had become a little tin of liquid gold when overhead I heard that unmistakable chattering sound. “Yack, yack, yack, yack” – my lady-friend the slate-blue kingfisher. This noisy little bird had spent the winter here in the marina, dodging rigging during her flights up and down the fairways, fishing along with those flashy hooded mergansers that also spent time here fishing. I’d grown accustomed to her, a little flash of gray, white and chestnut that often landed on the upper spreaders of Sea Witch to eat her fishy meal. Yah, there was occasionally a bit of a mess on the desk, but to me this bird represented ‘the quality of life” and fish parts were a small penalty. The varnishing could wait a few minutes. Watching a kingfisher at close range was better.
I sat back and studied her. I knew this one was a female. In most bird species, the male is the most colorful – fitting clothes for the obviously less intelligent of the genders, but kingfishers are reversed. Both have complex grayish-blue and white patterns, but the female has a reddish-chestnut band across the stomach.
Belted Kingfishers are around the waters of western Washington and coastal B.C. year-round. During breeding season in spring they can get very vocal and spend their time defending local fishing territories against others of their kind. About a foot long, they have evolved a very specialized set of tools suited for their lifestyle. Their method of making a living is simple. They sit on a perch overhanging water, like a tree branch, piling or boat rigging, and when their fantastic eyesight spots a tiny three-inch fish below the water’s surface – they go for it like a rocket. A terrific plunge at lightning speed either spears the quarry or the bird manages to grab the fish in its bill. Another variation is to stop in passing flight, hover for a moment and then take the high dive. Once the fish is captured, the fisher-king finds a perch where it beats the heck out of the fish until it’s subdued, followed by rearranging it so it can be swallowed whole – gills, scales and fins pointing aft. When fish aren’t available, frogs and aquatic insects are second choice on the menu, but it’s the fish that give this skillful bird its name (afterall, they’re not the frogfisher or insectfisher).
In the 1936 book, Birds of America, George Gladden wrote: “This is one of the pronounced and picturesque personalities of the feathered world – a handsome, sturdy and self-reliant bird who makes his living by the persistent, skillful and largely harmless practice of an ancient and respected art. [Fishing!] What wonderful eyesight he must have. From a fluttering halt in his flight ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the water he makes his plunge, like a blue meteor, or not infrequently from a perch fifty feet or more from the water, striking it with an impact that, one would think, would completely knock the wind out of him. It is as graceful and daring a ‘high dive’ as is to be seen anywhere”.
The bill: an amazingly long and oversized appendage with a slight crook in the upper mandible, evolved so added pressure can be applied like a meat sheers or pliers. The overly-large head (like a doll) fits the bill but seemingly not the rest of the body. Feet: so small they look ludicrous. Evidently kingfishers can barely walk – but then they don’t really need to. Perching is what they’re all about, so they only need feet to grab the branch. After fifty years of watching kingfishers, I don’t ever remember seeing one walk, but they do walk. Kingfishers nest in holes in waterside banks, like so many eroded shoreline cliffs we have around the Northwest. They dig an upwards sloping tunnel sometimes eight feet deep into these sandy banks and then widen the far end for the nesting chamber. You can tell kingfisher nest holes by the “W” shaped entry. As they land, both feet scrape a slight trench on the bottom of the landing strip, and then they walk up the tunnel in total darkness to the nest. Inside, five to seven nestlings wait expectantly for their parent’s return – and a regurgitated meal. After three weeks, the fledglings work their way to the tunnel entrance and their first flight – sometimes from a hole 30 feet up on a cliff. Remember, in the confining tunnel there’s no fluttering around learning to fly for a kingfisher, and also remember, they’ve been in that black hole for weeks and not watching their parents avian skills. They simply jump and hopefully ancient instincts help them get it right during the first second.
How beloved are these birds? Well, Canada has paper money with former Prime Ministers, the Queen, and – a five dollar bill with a kingfisher. It’s even kingfisher-blue. And the varnishing? It appeared the day was over!
You can go to our index page of more published stories.
Link here to the same story on our website, larryeifert.com.
If you’d like to see why I write about our ol’ boat, here’s more about Sea Witch.
Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us. Thanks for reading. Our mailing list is increasing, so if you know of anyone else who might like this, send us their address. Larry
with more art in America's national parks than any other artist
