Category Archives: Murals

Murals, New Painting Post, Waysides

A National Treasure- Sol Duc Valley in Olympic National Park

National_Treasure

I ran across this post I had originally written last year, but somehow it was never published. I probably had a bunch of posts and this one didn’t make the cut, but it’s never too late for good art, right?

As one drives up the Sol Duc Valley, on the northwest side of Olympic National Park west of Seattle, there are lots of pull-outs with overlooks to the river or trails leading to some of the best forests I know. This isn’t quite temperate rain forest, but it’s close. It truly is a National Treasure, and it’s a big thanks to the folks at Olympic N.P. who continue to allow me to paint my “backyard”.

Readers seem interested in the artistic processes that go into these more complex paintings. It’s one thing to paint a fine-art image of an old-growth forest. I can just be, well, “artistic” and I paint what I see or what I like, but these complex collages with lots of species are a different beast. Not only do I have to paint the bear, but it has to at least appear to be very accurate. It has to be sized properly with reference to dozens of other critters, and it has to be animated and not stiff. I can’t place, say, a bobcat right next to a rabbit, or a shady plant out in the open. Sometimes it’s a real challenge.

Here’s the fourth draft of the initial sketch.

Wayside UniGuide Grid v. 2.0 (September 2006)
Wayside UniGuide Grid v. 2.0 (September 2006)

As you can see, the finished painting ended up being wildly different than this sketch. Critters appeared, then disappeared, then arrived in other locations. (Sort of like the squirrels that continually try to break into our barn. I chased one out today that was attempting to hide in the Fiberglas insulation over my workbench.) I also had to figure out what to paint behind the text, so this painting could also be used for other things such as park publications and exhibits maybe without the text – or maybe even a future jigsaw puzzle.

And you thought being an artist was easy! Well, maybe not easy, but after 40 years it’s still a lot of fun. It’s often said that being a painter is an old-man’s game. I’m starting to believe it.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

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Murals

Carson River Mural Beginnings


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Last week I sent out the sketch for this painting. A commission for a non-profit, this painting is for their new visitor center. The scene isn’t exactly accurate as to the way it truly is, but hopefully will give the viewer a ‘sense of place’. I have a nice little singing marsh wren painting I’ve also done to warm up for this, which I’ll send in a few days.
In the meantime, I’ll tell you how this is going. The painting isn’t as large as many I do like this, maybe 3’x5′. At this size, it’s large enough that I can get some details in, and small enough so it won’t take a month to paint. I first put down several coats of a very dark brown (almost black) base, so when I paint this up to lighter colors, it hopefully looks like a landscape just emerging from night. Those dark areas around the bottom will soon disappear. You see the High Sierra Front (east side of Lake Tahoe area) is almost finished. It’s on the west side of the Carson Valley, putting early morning light right on these high peaks. They’d shine like crazy when that morning light hits them.
I paint these things from the background to foreground, usually top to bottom, so the mountains go in first as you can see, then the area slightly closer to the viewer, and so on, but to give me a sense of the entire composition, you’ll see some critters outlined or just roughed in. This helps me figure out what the final image might look like. This photo was taken yesterday, so today it’s much farther along, but why waste time photographing it? Let’s get back to work.
Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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.

You can also leave comments on the blog here. Every little bit helps me understand how to be a better painter.

Murals

Carson River Mural Sketch

Pencil sketches are always difficult to see here, so click on this image to enlarge it. A large non-profit organization is working on a project south of Reno Nevada along the Sierra Front, and, as part of it this painting will soon be installed in their new visitor center at the ranch. It’s an exciting prospect for me to paint this. Sandhill cranes, bald eagles, large populations of white-faced ibis, and one of the only colonies of tri-colored blackbirds in Nevada are here. With 250 species of birds and a backdrop of mountains that just doesn’t quit, it’s an exciting place to paint one of these complex habitat murals. I’ve painted for this private organization before. There’s been a mural and nature guide for the Kenai River in Alaska (exceptional field trip), one for the Great Salt Lake wetlands north of Salt Lake City (where we got to see a peregrine falcon’s nest up close as the parent divebombed us) and another one north of this current image in the Lahanton National Wildlife Refuge. That mural included a very fun airboat trip out into the tule marshes – you know, the boats with the big propellers on the backs that go in about 2″ of water. USFWS showed us some fresh water clams still living there that are hold-overs from the last Ice Age.

I’m working up a ‘warmup’ painting for this mural of a marsh wren singing that I’ll post soon.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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.

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Murals

Welcome to Sol Duc Valley

Since this wayside panel is being printed this month, I thought I’d pass it on here. I published another one of these back on November 8th, and you can see it here. For this project, I painted 21 paintings for 3 panels at Olympic National Park’s Sol Duc Valley entry kiosk. With the others last year, that makes 24 images you can see while driving the 17 miles from national park gate to road’s end where a trail leads to this grand waterfall – Sol Duc Falls. At 4′ x 6′, these are pretty large panels.

So what? Well, I like to call these efforts “public art galleries in our parks”, and I now have hundreds of these things in parks, preserves and wildlife refuges around the West. You’re hiking or driving along, and suddenly there’s a piece of art and a small story to tell you, or interpret, what you’re seeing. It’s just a great way to experience a beautiful place, and, I hope, to heighten your experience beyond what nature is providing (if that’s possible). These panels don’t use the original art itself, but are always fabricated out of fiberglass, stainless steel or a Formica product, so they’ll probably last longer than I will. I’d like to image someone coming along decades from now and stumbling over one of these things – and having it enhance their day.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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 group – or just ‘talk’ with us.

Murals

New Olympic National Park exhibits


Sol Duc Valley Visitor’s Map Kiosk

To best view this image, you need to click and enlarge it.

Seems like somewhat of a milestone here. This is one of three new outdoor wayside exhibits just “sent to press” for Olympic National Park. I’ll post the other two soon. They’re very large, actually the biggest I think I’ve done, at 48″ x 72″, and are being produced with the fiberglass embedment process. For those reader that don’t know this stuff, that’s when a print gets covered with fiberglass layers until it’s about 1/8″ thick. If we’re lucky, it’ll last 25 years. These three will soon be installed in the gateway kiosk area of Olympic’s Sol Duc River road and will somewhat match the other three I now have out there. I did the art and initial design, but the almost-countless hours of graphic design were done by Janet Scharf, who’s on park staff.

These panel paintings allow me to occasionally insert ourselves in the work. For instance, that’s Nancy sitting by the fire, with out VW camper behind. She originally had shorts on, but that was deemed to controversal for this (I, personally, think her legs look great and might have helped the painting). The hikers at the bottom are the two of us, but they thought I should be turned into a Latino – so that was fun. And Nancy’s also standing on the Sol Duc Falls bridge in the upper right.

The map was another matter altogether. I did the large painting from Google Earth flyover images, then scanned it into Photoshop. Then it was brought into Illustrator for all the roads, trails and those wierd map labels that curve and contort. Finally, that file was brought into InDesign for the final layout with all the other images. What a juggling act!

To check availability of the other small originals I’ve blogged about the past few weeks, check the blog here.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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.

You can also leave comments on the blog here. Every little bit helps me understand how to be a better painter.

Murals, New Painting Post

Stream Stones and Bristlecones


Progress on the Bristlecone Pine mural
I sent out the pencil sketch for this painting on September 8. and now, after several review comments and changes only a dendrologist (tree scientist) would recognise, I’m moving along pretty well on the final. Many large-scale painters do a complete smaller image first, then recreate it in the larger final version. I’ve never been comfortable with that process because it seems like I’d just be painting something twice. It’d be like remarrying the same person you’ve already divorced – all those little issues you hated the first time ’round are still lurking there. Nancy and I have done several 90′ paintings without a finished ‘baby’ painting and it was truly exciting – for both us and the clients that were scared numb. Nancy once stated: “we are in SERIOUS trouble here” but we still pulled it off nicely. Next week I hope this’ll be close to finished and I’ll send another update.

But that’s not all:

Stream Stones

This is another painting from our recent alpine excursions. If you know your Pacific Northwest geology, you’d pick up that these stones are from the North Cascades and not the Olympics. Cascade stones are very much more diverse in color and texture – brownish iron oxides and lots of gray speckled granites. If you see these stones around the Olympic Mountain edges, they undoubtedly came there from scraped streambeds in the Cascades by way of the mile-high Cordilleran Ice Sheet 80 centuries ago, and they match pebbles you’d find in any Cascade river today.

You might think 80 centuries is awhile ago, but consider this: there are bristlecone pines in the White Mountains and Nevada that approach 50 centuries. And that’s the way I tie the top part of this entry with the bottom part of.

Murals

Artist’s Sketch – Bristlecone Pine mural sketch #2

Ancient Bristlecone Pines
This is straight from the artist’s studio.
You’re receiving this weekly email blog because a friend or associate thought you’d like these occasional postings. This is from Larry Eifert, long-time artist and writer, the guy who has more art in America’s National Parks than any other. These postings show some of the personal inner workings of an artist creating everything from large wall murals to smaller easel canvases. All are about America’s Nature. To not receive these emails any more, simply hit reply and write “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Bristlecone-sketch

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And so: For years, I’ve wanted to paint the ancient bristlecones of the high and dry western desert mountains. Thought I had it at Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park (where I experienced as close to a spiritual moment as I’ve ever had), then later at Utah’s Bryce Canyon, but budget problems or scheduling always got in the way. Now, thanks to a nut (and NOT a pine nut) burning down the visitor center in the Shulman Grove of California’s White Mountains just east of the High Sierra, and the generosity of the Crater Lake Institute that is spearheading a high-elevation pine interpretive program, I’m having a go at the most iconic and picturesque grove of them all.

Here’s an updated version of the initial sketch that has changes from comments from all the bristlecone-pros.

This image shows two ancient trees, both possibly 4500 years of age and living at 10,000 feet of elevation in a super-dry limestone mountain landscape. The bits of dead trees strewn around the ground could be thousands of years older still. Birds and animals shown all live here, at least during the warmer months, bringing the only other sounds to this stark and beautiful landscape besides the singing winds through branches and past needles. It’s quite a place.

As I did with the similar whitebark pine painting last year, I’ll send an update on the progress of this one next week. This is going to be fun.

Thanks for reading. If you’re received this in error, we apologize.
Larry

We have posters and jigsaw puzzles of the last “High-Five” painting (whitebark pine = five-needled high-mountain pine).
Posters are here.
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Murals

Tolowa Dunes State Park, Crescent City CA

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.

Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.

Thanks for reading.
Larry

Murals

Elk Prairie, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

Elk Prairie, Prairie Creek Redwoods State and National Park, is south of Crescent City California – north of Eureka. I have a lot of work there, two large commissions in the visitor center museum, many roadside panels, lots of printed products in the non-profit store (posters, puzzles, books – you name it).

So, when the State of California asked if I was interested in doing another one for an interpretive exhibit, I jumped at the chance. I have this legacy-thing going there and want it to continue. Big opening night for the mural installation is mid-June, 2008.