Category Archives: New Painting Post

Blog Posts by Larry Eifert

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Olympic Chipmunk – Grand Ridge Trail

This new painting is now available, or not – Nancy bought it when she saw me writing this!

It’s an Olympic chipmunk, endemic only to the Olympic Mountains of Washington State, meaning it’s only here in the Olympics. It’s a very small chipmunk species that seems to have a very pointy nose. We see them often on subalpine trails (and it’s not the other chippy down in the lowlands that’s much bigger). I was lucky enough to grab a shot of this one for reference and, since all these trails are still snowed up, this is a dalliance into late summer hiking that’s soon to happen around here. Here’s Nancy spotting the little guy on that big rock, Grand Basin in the background.

Grand Trail, the highest maintained trail in Olympic National Park, is mostly above treeline (where the chipmunks are NOT), but it also drops into the subalpine fir with occasional whitebark pine where these little guys live their lives as they have for generations. Pikas do not live in the Olympics, so I assume Olympic chipmunks replace them in this habitat.

When I walk here, I like to sense how many feet have traveled along this ridgetop before me, all the way back to the Paleo-hunters who would sit here waiting for a mammoth to wander by below them. In those days, the entire Strait was filled with ice, but this high trail was open to observant travelers – just like us.

Sorry, so far the painting isn’t for sale.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

Site Visit to El Malpais National Monument

I always thought this woman had a glow to her, and this proves it. Inside the big restored kiva at Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico.

But along with that bit of cheesecake, we just returned from a site visit to El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico – 340,000 acres, 400 caves, lava flows and sandstone cliffs. Go there and hear the blood rushing in your ears it’s so quiet! I simply love being taken around to see ‘the best stuff’ on these painting site visits, getting an advanced understanding of an amazing place from the pros.  This time it was a park I’ve never been to, even more amazing.

Here is one of the caves, ceiling collapsed to expose that amazing New Mexico sun and all of us geared up with caving stuff. We went a very long way back into the blackness, but some of these caves are many miles long and even several stories.

Here we sat as the sun set, waiting for the bat flight from another cave. I’d have sat here forever, in the eyelash grass, bats or not, and watched the stars appear, surrounded by miles of no one but the mountain lions and elk. This is a vast place with relatively few people.

In a couple of days, I did enough drawings to get a grasp of what this painting will become.  I presented them with the half-dozen best. This one was drawn while in the car, driven by Ranger Mandi Toy from Grand Canyon, North Rim – and over a washboard road that simulated a carnival ride. She did a great job keeping it on the road – I did a passable job at the basic layout that held through almost a dozen drawings. First one’s usually THE one!

The sketch below is coming close to the idea. This is going to be the back of the new park map, similar to others I’ve done like this, a grand and complicated college of nature. Four main themes are here, the lava caves, sandstone cliffs, giant lava flows and the distant and vast vistas we saw everywhere. You can see so far around here that we often said “how far IS that mountain in the distance?”  Also going in the painting will be cultural remains of a pueblo – some rock walls and pot shards. They leave it pretty much open to my ideas and passions. I just get to paint!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Snow Creek Wayside Panel Installed

I think I probably posted this painting as it was happening a few months ago, but a couple of weeks ago, the good folks with the North Olympic Salmon Coalition finally installed the last panel in this project. This one tells the story of restoring Snow Creek as it meanders down into Discovery Bay,  just a few miles from our studio, and how this valley is on the way to becoming a healthy stream for salmon. Lots of money, lots of time and people power, and a very beautiful place.

Here’s the best part for me: this is right beside Highway 20, the main road from our home to Olympic National Park and the big box town of Sequim. We leave home, drive over the pass beside Discovery Bay, down this hill and there this is, just waiting for me to hate it. (I hate all of them, no big deal). So, I get to drive right by my own stuff on the way to enjoying the pizza bite samples at Costco. What a kick!

In case you want to see how it looks without the frame, here’s the final fabricated panel on aluminum by Gopher in Minnesota. Great job – the best in the country.

Snow Creek Restoration, NOSC

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Pacific Wren – Forest Gatekeeper

We were going down the trail the other day. Are you with me? And this little wren was carrying on an endless mouthy song right in front of us.  We walked right up to it. Not a moment of hesitation with this four-inch brown ball of chatter, its body about the size of my thumb. Right in front of me, it confronted my right to pass as if it owned the place!  Then I had a chance to examine the pile of stuff it was perched on – a Northwest forest for sure, with young wintergreen, ragbag lichens and some kind of leafy moss. I was struck with the complexity and beauty of that bit of complex airborne mat – probably more than I was with the little bird.

A painting like this gives me a chance to look. Not just to see something, but actually to LOOK at it. The details of one small place on our planet, the way twigs and branches combine with moss and lichens to form a dense mat of living softness. Everything here jostles for space, egged on by lots of water falling from the sky. I just like to notice the details, such as how the sky color reflects off leaves, deep earth colors compete with each other, grays and greens combining from sky and foliage.

I put this in a custom mat and hemlock frame. It’s 12″ x 12″ outside measurements. If you’d like this painting, please email me at larry@larryeifert.com.  No gallery commission, so this one is $175 framed as you see it with a bit of postage added on.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center Installation Complete

A two-year project finally gets across the finish line for Olympic National Park. Not the easiest thing to capture, but Nancy did a pretty good job of it photographing the final installation. A four-sided room with old-growth canopy, four other paintings on a tabletop with intricate details like swimming salmon, an otter, a fantasy image of Mount Olympus. There are hidden critters, pileated woodpeckers, spotted owls, snails, slugs, snakes, salamanders and more. There were times I truly wondered how this was all coming together, but it did – and I think it works pretty well.

Below, here’s a progress shot of some of the wall paintings (the original art) laid out in the old Superintendent’s house at Olympic NP.

And below: this part was too big to see all in one piece in the studio, so we tacked it up outside the barn occasionally to see how it was working. Nancy painted lots of the trees.

Installation with the guys from Virginia, Rob from Color-ad and Mike who did the 3-d stuff. I think we felt like family by the time with was finished.

Highly interactive tabletop was a pain to figure out, Often we all just made it up.

This is now installed and open for viewing at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center on the west side of Olympic National Park. The first new exhibits since construction of the building in 1968, I was first here in about 1978 for a backpack up the valley. That entry into the Hoh had a profound effect on me and it’s probably a big reason I have now spent my last two decades in Port Townsend – on the othe side of the peninsula. It’s a rare and spiritual place for both Nancy and I –  and now I feel we’re a part of it.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

2018-4 Olympics Spring Runoff – Harlequin Ducks

I’m back with new stuff! This new painting is 7″x 10″ acrylic on canvas. Framed as you see it, overall size is about 14″ x 17″. Without gallery commission, I’m offering it here for $195 framed plus some postage.

We see harlequin ducks here in Port Townsend all winter, hanging out along the waterfront and sleeping on rocks. Usually they’re mated couples, occasionally with a kid or two. In April, they head back up into the mountains, find a rushing river and set up shop for another summer in the Olympics.  They’re very colorful ducks, favorites of ours because of the wild places they live. We’ve watched them dive these wild rivers, jump right into seemingly bone-breaking currents, and in fact studies have found these ducks usually have many mended bones that have probably been crushed by slamming into underwater rocks.

This time of year, the streamside alders in the lowlands are just coming into leaf, but up on these mountain rivers, just a few miles inland, it still feels like winter – leaves and catkins are still bound tight against nighttime cold. I could paint wild places like this until I croak – which I plan on doing.

If you’d like this painting, please email me at larry@larryeifert.com. We have all sorts of payment options. No gallery commission, so this one is $195 framed as you see it.

Thanks for reading this week. I’ll have more soon.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, Posts about other stuff, Waysides

Watercolors for Kennesaw Mountain NP in Georgia

I’ve haven’t posted here for awhile. Someone even emailed me to ask if I was Okay – yes, just busy with, wait for it, 9 projects and 54 paintings! No, I’m not the least bit freaked – it’s just life. These two paintings came along this past week and I thought they were nice. It’s not nature as usual, but these are two images that I might have painted in those Northern California years of the 80’s. 

Both these are paintings are watercolor and pencil and show two former homesteads at Kennesaw Mountain NP in Georgia. I’m painting 18 images for new wayside panels there. The log house was researched using one from New Salem State Park in Illinois where I grew up and the references were provided by Delaney Shriner, a childhood chum who still lives there. It’s a ‘dog-trot cabin, two separate houses with a porch connecting them, probably one of the first condos. I like this feeling of ‘oldness’ in how the pencil blends with the paint.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, New Published Story

Western Grebes in 48 North this month

I’m always months late posting these stories. This one is as close to being current as it gets – it’s still in stores for another day.

Here’s the text:

If I were Mother Nature, designer of all things wild, I would have felt proud completing the western grebe – a job well-done. First, it’s just a beautiful creature, but parts are combined to make an amazing machine. That bright red eye helps see underwater and bulbous feet allow it to move faster than fish can swim. Those funny over-sized feet also make it possible to run OVER water and even walk upright on shore like a Dapper-Dan in a black and white tux. Then there is this double-jointed neck that curves backward and can act like a spear. It bends back and – wham, into a fleeing fish. This is quite the bird, and it’s here right now for you to see in the Salish Sea. Look for these gregarious birds in quiet bays. They’ll be in flocks, almost never alone.

During spring and summer breeding season, western grebes are found on freshwater wetlands far to the north and east of our coast. In the fall, they fly south and west to salt water, often during the night. Once they get to the Salish Sea or other warmer lakes and bays along the West Coast, they congregate in large flocks, sometimes in the thousands. I once saw western grebes on Clear Lake in California, a mass of birds from shore to shore covering many miles of water. During spring courtship, these birds are known for their elaborate rituals and displays. Pairs both react to some private signal (a wink?) and both rise out of the water in unison and run together, side by side, in a flutter of feet defying gravity. Having spent their energy, they ‘land’ in the water again and act as if nothing has happened. Well, it probably hasn’t, yet.

All the rest of these, five years worth, are here in a new section on my website:

http://larryeifert.com/published-writings-and-art/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine/

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, Waysides

Dismal Nitch on the Columbia River – new wayside paintings

Click to enlarge in your browser.

Not exactly nature art, but still meaningful to me. Lewis and Clark National Park is at the mouth of the  Columbia River. Part of the park sticks out into the river and was the location (maybe) where the Corp of Discovery stayed for a week, wet, hungry and in a dangerous situation. My task here is to show the event in six paintings that will be placed along this walkway. Somewhat serendipitously, we were here a year ago goofing around and a couple of weeks later this bid to fill up these empty panels appears. I was the only one involved that had actually been to the site.

The most meaningful thing, at least to me is that for part of the research, I used my mom’s book “George Shannon, Young Explorer with Lewis and Clark”, Virginia S. Eifert, Dodd Mead, New York, 1963. What a kick, painting the exact same thing she wrote about 55  years ago, and using her research for my paintings. Keeping it in the family!

Panel bases are already in and waiting. Below is an amazing bronze, probably worth more than our house, that sits right at the end of the loop trail.

Nancy beside the big Corps of Discovery bronze with Dismal Nitch cove in the background.
A section of the bronze, a lost wax casting of the highest quality. I know, I’ve helped do this stuff.

My paintings will be scattered along the shore and tell the story of salmon, Indians, Lewis and Clark and Jefferson’s vision of westward expansion. Of course, I’m sprinkling nature into all of them.

I like to compare Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery with the moon landings of the 60’s. It was the same, really, for these guys to head off into nowhere, without maps, and find a way across the continent in a government-sponsored expedition.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

Hoh Rainforest Canopy mural scanned

I sure wouldn’t have scanned this monster myself, but here it is, all 12 gigs of it and 36′ wide.  I started this project back in May of 2015, and finally I’m free of it. Yaaaah. This scan is two of the seven paintings being installed at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center at Olympic National Park in a couple of months (when they get the road open again after the last high-water).

And here it is against the side of our barn last summer, painted at 70% size (that’s the biggest I can get this media). I painted it rolled up with just the section I was painting on at the time unfurled. Interesting way to go about it. Occasionally I would bring it downstairs and nail it up here to see if it was all fitting. As you can see from the scan at the top, it worked pretty well.  Here’s a progress composite a few months ago.

This a forest with one of the highest biomass counts on the planet – and one Nancy and I never tire of. It’s been fun painting my local park. I’m sure this installation will last longer than I will.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.