Category Archives: New Painting Post

Blog Posts by Larry Eifert

New Painting Post

Rialto Beach

Rialto-Beach-Sun-and-Fog

Close, but not quiet finished, I still thought I’d post this today. I’m in our library right now, looking up at this grapefruit juice carton we found on the beach at Rialto awhile ago. Tucked away on a bookshelf, it’s all bleached out but clearly says “grapefruit” with all the rest in Japanese. We’re fairly sure it’s tsunami debris. When we opened it, a giant whiff of grapefruit odor poured forth. So, that’s the spark for the painting – a memory of picking that container up last year and wondering who held it last – and are they still alive. In the painting, I replaced the juice container with a red float covered with Japanese characters, which we also found. The location is right at Ellen Creek, where most of the hikers turn around because of the wet ford.

 

grapefruit

 

 

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on board, 48″ x 24″ and is headed for Gallery Nine downtown in Port Townsend. This is the original painting, NOT a print. If you’re interested, email me for price and details. No gallery commission – yet!
Email us for details.

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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Dipper on the North Fork Returns

North-Fork-Dipper
  • This is not a new painting, but this week we sold a large custom print of it. The painting itself is in our private collection, just because I liked it, and now I think I like it even more.  There’s a quality about the river’s transparency, of water-carved rocks glowing from within – and that reflected glow on the dipper. OR, maybe I like it because of the memory of the moment. That’s important now as spring slowly arrives here and I wish for warmer hiking days. We have 6″ high nettles up in our woods, daffs higher than that, the willows are out – and it surely is an early spring, but not earlier enough for us.
  • That moment: North Fork of the Sol Duc River in Olympic National Park. Hike up and over a little ridge, ford the river up to your crotch in blindingly-cold ice melt – and you’re on a truly glorious and empty trail for miles. In places there are huge water-carved boulders (where we saw this dipper dipping), and in August it’s a grand place for skinny dipping for sure. Thanks, Kevin, for buying the print so these memories could return.
  • I think this is why I’m just a painter of life’s memories. I can paint pretty good non-objective images and commissioned fictitious murals of some detail, but when I look back at all the paintings through the years, I get the best emotional charge from painting experiences from the times (good or bad) in my life. I think of the moment, the experience surrounding that moment, who I was with, what it smelled like, felt like, sounded like.

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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

It’s a wrap – Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone

Prismatic-Hot-Springs

  • This week I finished up this new mural about Yellowstone Climate Change. I’m happy with it – or at least as happy as I ever get at this stage of working on something for a month and never truly knowing how it’s going to end. This painting and the last Yellowstone mural about whitebark pines (finished last month and seen here), were both funded by the Crater Lake Foundation. I know it seems odd to have someone at Crater Lake fund two Yellowstone paintings, but there’s more to this. First is that this painting is the 12th big painting I’ve done for them, and it’s part of a broad scheme for the funders to create an art collection reflecting various ecosystems and habitats centered around western pines. Whitebarks, bristlecones and now the lodgepoles in this one, are all threatened by Climate Change, and using art to educate is what I’m all about – so I’m thrilled to be able to contribute to this.
  • And, once again, here is the original sketch so you can see how it evolved for the concept. And, once again here’s the story. Lodgepole pines are built to handle wildfire. Their cones won’t even open unless their heated. But today’s hotter summers, warmer winters and less snow mean many more pine bark beetles are surviving cold winters and killing millions of these trees.
  • This painting is meant to show the Yellowstone ecosystem, its wildlife and how the forests are being battered into something almost unfit for wildlife to live in. It’s a trick to paint destruction and yet show it as beauty, and yet as musician Jack Johnson says in this Climate Change YouTube video (please take a minute and watch it), we don’t have to think of this as an end point, just change we need to somehow learn how to handle – and leave this beautiful world in a better place than when we arrived in it.
Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

Thanks for reading this week. Pass the video on – I thought it was very good.
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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Dungeness Crabs – My 48-North story for January

2014-1-Dungeness-Crabs

Holiday Fresh Dungeness Crab Eating: it’s like a holiday itself and we’ve been doing a lot of it lately. So, besides the crabs, I cooked up a story about them for my monthly page in 48-North magazine that just hit the stores this week. What a lot of work being a crab!

Each year, over a million pounds of Dungeness crab is caught and consumed here in the Salish Sea. Most everyone knows how to catch, cook and eat this tasty crustacean – we use the third and fourth feet for the meat picks – no metal, please. Yet few know the details of a crab’s life – so here goes. They were named after Dungeness, Washington near Sequim on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula, where the first Northwest commercial crab fishery began. Like most creatures with external skeletons, they must shed their hard shells as they grow larger. By carefully backing out of their shells, they moult between May and August, and mating occurs immediately afterwards before the new exoskeleton hardens on the females. This happens when the male begins a physical embrace with the female that lasts for days. With the female tucked underneath the male and oriented so that their abdomens touch, heads facing each other, the ‘love-making’ begins. Try to picture this. I’ll bet you can’t and not smile.

Ah, but life goes on, and several months later the female ‘lays’ her eggs, possibly up to 2.5 million of them. Completely helpless, they remain attached under her abdomen for 3 to 5 more months until they hatch. Then the free-swimming young crabs go through 5 larval stages and about 10 molts over the next 2 years. Male Dungeness crabs reach legal catch size at 3 or 4 years of age, at which time they weight 2 or 3 pounds. They may live for 13 years.

Thanks for reading this week, and Happy New Year. May it be better than the last one. 2013 – RIP.
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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Grand Prismatic Hotspring – Yellowstone progress

Hot-Springs-4

There’s progress on the current painting, Christmas festivities or not. We had a cold spell – at least cold for Northwestern Washington and it got down into the 20’s, even high teens at night. For the first time ever, Nancy told me to move the easel and painting stuff into the house where it’s a bit more climate-controlled. Nice! Now it’s back to normal temps, but I’m still here, painting right beside one of the big east-facing windows and not really wanting to go back to the studio yet. So, here’s the progress in a week, and considering Christmas and all, I think it’s going well. Should be finished by next week.

 

This is last week: I blogged about it here.

 

Progress-2

And here’s the sketch a few weeks before:

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

AND, right out side the window next to where I’m painting, our neighborhood barred owl hangs out during the day. He waits patiently for one of the squirrels or towhees to make a wrong move, but so far, SO FAR, we’ve not seen him get anything. Nancy went out with her camera and got within about 15 feet when he regurgitated a big owl pellet – so he must be catching something. Either way, I’ve been greatly enjoying this closeness to nature – as I paint nature. He stares at me like he knows how to do this Yellowstone-thing better. Maybe he does! (photo by Nancy Cherry Eifert)

Backyard bared owl

Thanks for reading this week. This may be the last post for 2013 and we both just want to thank you for all the support everyone’s given us this time around the sun. This year makes it something like the 45th year I’ve made a living by making art about nature.
Larry and Nancy Cherry 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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Yellowstone Lodgepole Forests in Peril

Progress-2

A second Yellowstone Climate Change painting is evolving on my easel now. The last mural a few weeks ago was about the high elevation whitebark pine forests there and the mass die-off that threatens an entire ecosystem. This one is about the lodgepole pine forests and how Climate Change is threatening that natural community. The center of interest is the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, biggest hot spring in America. How will Climate Change effect this? Low water levels in summer may possibly turn it into a giant dry brown hole. Broken, burned and dead lodgepole pine forests are happening everywhere in the West, but the giant fires a few years ago in Yellowstone showed something was seriously amiss. As Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior stated: “The entire West is one giant tinderbox waiting to go off!” So, I’m trying to show all this with art. Not easy, but definitely worthwhile if I can pull it off.

Progress-1

And here’s the initial laying in of the concept with paint. Distant background is beginning to take shape.

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

And here’s the original sketch. I blogged about it before here.

Next week, Christmas or not, I’ll be closing in on finishing (I hope). Happy Holidays to everyone and thanks for helping two artists make a living at what they both love. It wasn’t the best year for us, thanks to the Sequester and Shutdown, but we’re still alive and kicking – and looking forward to a better one coming up.

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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Two Park Puzzles back for Christmas

Eifert_Sonoran_box

    Nancy now has two old favorite 500-piece jigsaw puzzles back in the warehouse here – just in time for Christmas. They’re both in smaller, 4.5″ wide boxes, making shipping and storage easier. Out of almost 80, these paintings are actually two of the most popular we’ve ever printed. The puzzles themselves are 12″ x 36″ and both boxes have the interpretive key and essay on the box back.

Eifert_mural_Sonora_Desert

The Sonoran Desert can be ordered here.

I especially like the contracting colors in this vivid painting. The cardinal and flowering saguaro made it really pop, don’t you think?

Eifert_mural_Great_Smoky_Mtn_NP

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park puzzle can be ordered here. This painting was based in that lush area of the Smokies that I grew up with. It was the closest big national park to my home town, and we were there a lot. Today, in Port Townsend, Washington (about 3500 miles from the Smokies), we have one of those Flame Azaleas within 20 feet of me in my studio where I’m writing this, and in spring when it lights up, I always remember those amazing eastern mountains.

 

Merry Christmas to everyone, and thanks for supporting two hard-working artists for yet another year. We appreciate the support from all of you.

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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Yellowstone Whitebarks – Closing In

Progress-5

I’m closing in on completion of this current project, Whitebark Pines of Yellowstone. You can see the progress over the past few weeks here in other posts. Hey, this painting has it all: charismatic mega fauna including that emblem of Yellowstone, the griz, giant mountains, hot springs, wolverine, elk, wolves and even a lynx. All those I rarely get to plop into one painting, so it’s been a treat. Still working on the grouse, aspens and a bunch of details, so stay tuned for the next round within a week (because I have another one charging right behind).

    As I wrote before, this painting is supposed to illustrate the Climate Change disaster that’s occurring in Yellowstone. Bark beetles, blister rust, warmer winters with less snow, drier summers and lots of other factors are creating real havoc in this amazing place. Most of the critters and trees in this painting will probably end up missing from this great park – and I’m not at all happy to say it was us, all of us, that did this.

    But for now, I’ll finish the painting right after I go get some gas for the car.

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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

COOTS!

2013-12-Coots

At the request of my editor, here’s my 48 North magazine story on the American Coot for December 2013. It’s a tad bit early, but I liked the illustrations enough to show it off. Everyone thinks coots are just gray and black, but a closer look in the sun and you’ll see all sorts of colors. They’re odd little birds, as the story and illustration explains. Click on it and you’ll see a bigger version in your browser. I’m not kidding about the amazing color of those chicks!

    Climate Change: If you’ve read this stuff before, you’ll know I’ve been working on two large paintings about Climate Change and how it’s effecting Yellowstone. Today I spotted a couple of dozen purple violets in bloom in the yard here in Port Townsend – just as a hummingbird dive-bombed me. Now, it’s been unseasonably clear here and getting down below freezing at night because of it – and now here are these violets! Hummmm. Here I was complaining about the chilly nights. With hummingbirds and violets, what could I possibly have to complain about anything. Life is good!

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 beautiful photographs

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

New Painting Post

Progress on the Yellowstone Project

Yellowstone Progress 4

    Several of you asked to see progress photos of this project. So, let’s try it.

And here’s the progress over the past few days. I’ll put the most current at the top. For me, acrylic landscape painting is a back-to-front process, meaning I tend to paint the horizon first, then work my way to the foreground. It creates a cleaner painting situation for these larger images, but this painting is actually fairly small for me, about four feet on the horizontal – just big enough to get some serious detail, yet small enough to lug around.

Progress-2

    I often paint some section out fairly completely to see how it’s going to look, like this area near the bear. THE BEAR: notice it’s on all fours here, and at the top it’s standing. I might go back to this one – just not sure yet. It seems to be going much slower than usual, but there’s been lots of other stuff going on here. Might be a good thing as I’ve always been yelled at for being too quick to completely think these complex projects out.

Progress1

Here’s the original sketch I posted first on October 10th.

Whitebark-Sketch-vs2

It’s a complex painting, but the type I really relish. I just love standing here with my paint brush and imagining this scene is real, that I’m really here in the meadow looking at all that’s going on. I dream about 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 beautiful photographs

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