Category Archives: New Published Story

New Published Story, Wildlife

A Yellow-billed Loon Story

This was published in 48 North magazine last month. I thought the watercolor finished up nicely. This is the illustration part, below is the text that went with it. It was sort of a personal story for me.

“Growing up deep in ‘civilization’, I spent much time wishing to be in a wilderness somewhere, anywhere, and hearing the sounds of loons, owls and ravens. I still do that, but at least now I can get out there on a regular schedule. It’s important to me, and as life continues, the thrill of immersing myself in wildness is heightened by learning about it – and painting it. For me, loons are the embodiment of wild places, even if they aren’t exactly there when I see them. I saw one of these yellow-billed beauties recently off Port Townsend and was mentally transported, instantly, to a deep cove in Northern British Columbia, complete with grizzly tracks along the shoreline as they were being filled by a rising tide. I breathed the salt-saturated air, heard the peepers along the shore in a marsh, heard the loon’s mate calling out their ‘crazy laugh’, a tremolo no one never forgets. “

“Yellow-billed loons are the largest and heaviest loon, and difficult to identify in winter. Don’t use my painting to decide if what you’re seeing is a common loon or not. None are here in summer, but during winter and spring, these birds come to escape the harsh winters before returning in April to nest in the high arctic. There, both parents build a floating nest mound of muddy tundra vegetation along a lake’s shoreline and both incubate the eggs. The two chicks sometimes ride on their parent’s backs, even while diving for fish. Summer plumage changes them to dramatic black and white patterns that look like a broken diamond necklace that has been tossed at the bird, scattering all over its neck and back. They can be seen around the Salish Sea during April as they prepare to fly north for the summer.”

Just a few days ago I saw one of these birds on our daily 3-miles on the Pacific Northwest Trail. That’s right, I was hiking on a National Scenic Trail, except this one runs right through town and is only a mile away!

And here’s the original pencil drawing, pushed up just a bit with more contrast to make it pop better in a printed magazine. The watercolor was laid over it later.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com, down the right side of the home page.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, New Published Story, Washington State Parks

Jr Rangers Art at Deception Pass

The Junior Ranger program is nationwide and in most National Parks. I’ve contributed to a few in the past, providing art for the activity books. If you don’t know, it works like this: your kiddo asks at the visitor center for the book, they fill out the fun pages of puzzles and questions, many requiring getting out in the park – then get the Junior Ranger badge when you turn it back in before you leave. It’s a big deal, with millions of kids involved. Now, a few of the bigger state parks are getting into the action, and I just finished some art for Deception Pass State Park here in Puget Sound. Here’s a link to the national program. https://www.nps.gov/kids/parks-with-junior-ranger-programs.htm

Deception Pass has many habitats, beach, dunes, old-growth forest, cliffs and freshwater lakes.
This page is about soil and the bacteria and fungi that live in it.
Cliffs near the bay have distinctive plants, like this gumweed.
Oystercatcher, orchre stars, clams and crabs are around the rocky tidepools.
Sandy dunes are shown here, with the San Juan Islands offshore.

This is the sixth project I’ve done for this park, a small place packed with beauty. It’s suffering from too many people and too much noise from Navy jets training right over the park, but I still like to make art about these places. It helps me connect to them. Good nature doesn’t always have to be wilderness.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Hiking, New Painting Post, New Published Story, Wildlife

Starry Flounder in 48 North

Yesterday I received my copy of 48 North magazine in the mail, and here is my page. Always amazed when the greens print nicely, and they did this time, subtle shades that aren’t easy to reproduce. For some reason, that color hates me in print. Flounders, flatfish, are always favorites of mine to paint. These fish begin life swimming upright like normal fish, eyes on both sides, then later they get lazy and settle onto the seafloor to await food that swims by. Since predators need good vision to catch prey, the eye that faces downward migrates around to the other side. I’m not kidding, but if you’re a flatfish fisherman, you will have seen this most every time you catch one. I find them fascinating.

So here’s my story that went with the art:

A face only a mother could love. Starry flounders are just one species of 23 local ‘flatfish’. Flat because they tend to spend their time lying flat on the bottom, on either their right or left sides. Beginning life, they’re just a ‘normal’ fish that swim upright, an eye on each side of a vertical body. As they age, they spend more time laying sideways on the bottom, lying prone and just waiting for pry to swim close enough to grab. Soon, strange things happen with the growing juveniles, and it’s not just hormones. It’s a major anatomical change. One of their eyes actually migrates around their head to the other side, stopping just short of the other one. Now, the upside view has a pair of eyes looking for the next meal. These are hunters, after all, and they need binocular vision to assess distance. So, the flounder then has its same two eyes, but now they’re on the upper side of the body, like two little periscopes.

Starry flounders can grow to 36” long, or bigger than the size of a garbage can lid. At this size, they’re approaching 20 lbs and they can live upwards of 20 years. They’re often found near shore in bays or even fresh water and throughout the coastal North Pacific. They sport namesake star-like scales on both the lighter downside and darker upper side. The distinctive black bands on outer fins make it an easy flatfish to identify, and they can alter their colors to match surroundings. As predators, they often settle on a sandy bottom and wiggle their fins to cover themselves with sand and debris to hide. With only eyes showing as they move independently gazing about, and a mouth just waiting to go to work, they wait for a hapless crab or small fish to wander by, and then ‘wham’. Look for these fish as you bring your skiff through shallow water towards the beach. The fish’s outline is usually obvious from above.

I’m going to be expanding this blog a bit, adding more art from my partner in crime, Nancy Cherry Eifert, and essays on hiking and seeking wildness. This blog seems to be growing into something bigger than just art and it’s evolving. So I should too.

This next hiking season, I’m being sponsored by Six Moon Designs, an ultra-light backpacking gear company from Oregon. After hiking for decades in heavy old gear, and trying desperately to lighten my load, here’s an example of what they’re letting me try out. My tent weight just went from 6 lbs to less then 2! This is the Six Moon Lunar Solo tent. Check it out here. Or, I’ll see  you on the trail in a couple of months with a smile on my face.

If you want to sign up for my periodic blogs as emails, you can do it here.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New Painting Post, New Published Story, Posts about other stuff

Mom’s New Book

Not so fast, a painting first: we’ve been in Hilo again for awhile and I did some opaque watercolors, some on location. This one maybe needs some explanation. It’s an old pahoehoe lava flow, so old it’s been bleached smooth and now reflects the tropical sun as almost white. Above it is a patch of Naukapa-kahakai. Come on, you can say it – just pronounce each vowel separately – there’s only three of them. We saw these little yellow-billed cardinals everywhere in the lowlands, and some were even on our porch each morning, feeding their non-red headed youngsters within arms-length of us. I’d call this a red-headed cardinal, but there’s another bird here named that. This painting isn’t for sale. I just don’t think it’s ‘presentable’ as it’s more a field sketch.

This happy and beautiful place, Hilo, the rainiest city in America (up to 15x what Port Townsend gets) shows, to us, what a healthy and diverse society is all about. Mixed race: 32%, Asian: 34%, Hawaiian: 14% and white: 17%. Let THAT sink in a moment. There simply doesn’t seem to be any social conflict here, just happy and kind people living life in one of the oldest cities in the country. Sure, it’s a very liberal place, but there’s more to it than that. We’ve been here many, many times, bought a house once that fell threw, keep coming back to enjoy the culture and beauty of an real American tropical rainforest and a town that is over 1000 years old.

Okay, here’s mom’s book, or at least she’s inside. Mom is not on the cover! As many of you know, Virginia Eifert, Illinois author, photographer, painter and poet somehow found time to make me. She died in 1966 at the top of her game and was one of Illinois’ best writers, publishing 20 novels and founding and writing the Illinois State Museum’s magazine for 326 issues. And now, here she is in a new book 53 years later. The woman has ‘legs’.

This book is a series of stories about the early environmentalists of America, and included are some good ones, some of Virginia’s friends. Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Mardy Murie and Sally Carrighar. Others include John Muir and Ernest Thompson Seton. Most interesting to me, Teal and Peterson didn’t make the cut, and those guys were above her at the time, Teal even hired her to be an ‘assistant’ for field classes. She’d  have loved this. The book will be on Kindle and Amazon, but hasn’t been released yet. Clifford Knapp was a naturalist and educator from the Midwest who died in 2017.

Thanks for reading this week. 

Larry Eifert

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 paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Art, words and life from a former generation.

New Published Story

Tidepool Sculpin – My 48 North story for September 2018

Never got around to posting this in the midst of a bunch of much bigger paintings, but this was my September magazine page for 48 North magazine.  It’s late to post here, but I always want to leave a record of my stuff to keep track of it all.

Sculpins: a quick little color study of these tiny fish that live in rocky tidepools in the Northwest. There are many reasons to make these little guys (smaller than your thumb) featured here, but my favorite is the rather homebody lifestyle they have. Simply put, they like where they live and never stray far. Sure, they can live out of the water through an entire tidal change, and sure, they check out other pools as far away as a football field, but they always return home, and to the same pool!

Here’s a closeup of the little guy, loose pencil and watercolor. I don’t give myself much time on these and I like the process because it’s so very different than many of my bigger projects that are tight and detailed. Compare this with the 500 square feet of Hoh Rain Forest paintings I was doing at the same time I did this little sculpin and you can imagine the relief of starting and finishing something in the same session. Ahhh.

And here is the text that went with it in 48 North magazine:

Go ashore – poke around tidepools, and chances are good you’ll find this little sculpin. It might take a bit of looking, because their habit of secrecy means staying put, not moving a fin and waiting for you to pass by. Superbly camouflaged, these small 3.5” fish settle to the tide pool bottom and blend in so well with sand, crushed shells and bits of seaweed they just disappear. Put your hand over the water and, like a flash, they shoot forward to a safer place. It’s still the same tidepool, so just watch them flash, settle, and then have a good look. As the tide returns, sculpins could move about to other areas, but they have a home pool and rarely stray far. If moved, say 300 feet to another tidepool, they return to their original pool, not unlike salmon returning to spawn to their home stream.

There are five sculpin species here and all are carnivores, hunting small crustaceans and seaworms. In turn, they are hunted by all sorts of predators from herons to otters, so sharp spines that take the place of scales are protection as they live in a confined space with no escape. Sculpins occasionally get stranded out of water at low tide, beneath seaweed or under rock ledges. Not to worry. These fish can breathe air until the water returns a few hours later. Other fish can do this, too, and it begs the comparison to when fish crawled out of the water for good and took to the land in an evolutional move that eventually became us. Think about that next time you see one of these little fish. Is that you, grand dad?

This is the tidepool where I did much of the research for this story, Beach 4 at Olympic National Park. It’s one of our favorites for a low-tide poking around.

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

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 Published Story, Wildlife

Anemones – My monthly magazine story for August 2018

I’m a bit late on posting some of my 48 North magazine stories. Just too many interesting paintings happening that always seem more current. This one was the story pages back in August, so that meant I painted it in June. I promise, I’ll catch up to current soon.

And here’s just the art. It’s watercolor and pencil, brightened up with the computer before assembling the story with a readable font. I’ve tried this with my own lettering but it’s just not nearly as readable. 48 North magazine is here.

I have over 70 stories in past issues and you can read them on my website here.

I did another plumose anemone story before this one. Here it is from 2027,

And here’s the story:

Plumose Anemone

Look down the closest piling at low tide and chances are good you’ll see these animals. Yes, they animals, animals that look like flowers. Animals with deadly stinging tentacles that can move around and even grab, kill and eat small fish. There are many species of anemones in the Salish Sea, some tiny inch-wide creatures that congregate in colorful crowds, others can be two feet tall. The plumose averages a respectful 12” tall and can have up to 100 tentacles that sting and grab any morsel that floats by. The meal, often microscopic, is then transferred down into a waiting mouth, throat and stomach to be consumed. Remember Little Shop of Horrors? This is an oceanic equivalent, except there are millions of them under our docks and floats. Low tide might expose them to air, in which case they sort of fold up like a deflated balloon and wait for the incoming tide.

Anemones can move about, leaving one spot behind when it senses danger or a lack of food. When it does, it simply walks off, but leaves behind some anemone DNA and from this a new anemone will grow. In summer, it also creates and releases sperm and eggs that drift around until ‘things happen’. This animal is well-armed, as I said. It possesses two types of stinging tentacles, the most common is for stinging prey, a second set is for defense. These can elongate 2 or 3 times their length and reach out to attach anything passing by – think stinging nettles on your favorite river trail. Others from inside the body can be shot through the body column or mouth to do the same attacking. Basically, this beautiful animal may look great but it’s a killer if you’re a small witless creature swimming past. So, here’s the drill: at low tide, put your stomach on the dock, peep down the piling well and have a look for yourself. You won’t regret it.

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

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 Published Story

Water Ballet – my 48 North magazine story for July

A month late, there’s an entirely new one on in the stores this week. Better late than never! This is the story that goes with the sketchbook page:

We’re all connected to nature, connected to the web of life. Sure, we all know that, but can you explain it to your mates? Here’s a story you can use. There are many types of small foraging fish in the Salish Sea, surf smelt, herring, candlefish, herring and others. All swim together, “school,” for safety, and they all eat microscopic animals floating in the water. In turn, they are THE critical food source for many bigger critters – eagles, seabirds, seals, salmon and whales – to name just a few. In summer, I often see gulls frantically diving on large forage fish ‘balls’, so add gulls to the list. If the forage fish were to disappear, so would all the rest – and that appears to be what’s happening around here – for lots of reasons. To explain a bit more, take surf smelt. Most spawn on beaches at high tide where they lay eggs on sand or gravel. The eggs can tolerate occasional drying, and so smelt eggs are usually higher up on the beach. Sand lance and herring are lower and never exposed to air.

As you sail along, glance at the shoreline you’re passing. Are there human-placed boulders? Concrete walls? Old creosote-laden pilings or berms? All these are death to surf smelt because there isn’t sufficient beach for spawning. If there is some room below the barriers, imagine what will happen when Climate Change raises sea level a bit more. Forage fish occupy every marine and estuarine habitat in the Salish Sea – at least the ones unaltered by us. Some forage fish spawn out in open water, but most create their next generation right on our beaches. Surf smelt eggs have been documented on 275 miles of Puget Sound shorelines, about 10% of the total. I’m a painter of nature, as you can see, and, as part of much bigger projects, in the past two years I’ve created outdoor exhibits for 12 locations interpreting shoreline restoration. Changes are helping these small fish, but is it enough to save salmon and orcas?

And here’s the page on my website:

http://larryeifert.com/published-writings-and-art/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine/2018-03/

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, 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 Published Story

Stories from the Salish Sea on the website

I’ve recently gotten requests for back pages of my monthly magazine page in 48 North in Seattle. I often forget to post them, and going back through 65 months, I found I only had maybe 12 on the website. So, now they’re all up HERE so you can binge read them all, five years of them – as if you would. It was actually fun to go back and see how they’ve evolved, much tighter art now, looser in the writing. 48 North is a magazine all sailors from the Northwest read from time to time. It’s the ‘pickup’ mag we get in boating and marine supply stores everywhere, and I’ve gotten fan mail all the way from San Diego and Hawaii for my stories. Kind of fun to see the ‘legs’ of something published.

Below is a sample of what the printed page actually looks like with the text.

And here’s the link again in case you missed it.

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 Published Story, Wildlife

Red-throated Loons – My 48 North story for November, 2017

This is my 48 North magazine story for November. I thought t he subtle colors of this beautiful winter bird came out fairly well. Here’s the story:

“On the Port Townsend ferry, we crossed those notorious tide rips out in Admiralty Inlet and I spied quite a group of large striking birds, all milling about and diving for dinner in the turbulence. The red-throated loons are back from the north for winter in the Salish Sea. At about 24” long, these are the smallest of the three species of loons we see here, but they are still large birds. Easy to identify in flight, they have a hunchbacked look unlike any other Salish Sea bird and appear to fly very fast. Specialized bodies with legs placed as far to the stern as possible make for fast underwater swimming as they chase down and catch small fish. As with many species, they have evolved into a very specialized and successful fishing machine.”

“They arrive here in winter plumage, basic tux black and white with a very subtle mix that would drive a painter wild trying to portray. As winter progresses, they change profiles completely and sport a dramatic red-orange front and overall soft look of doe skin. Then they’re off for the long flight to the far northern lakes to nest, and here is where it gets interesting. These birds, with legs placed so far back on their bodies, make them almost unable to walk. They cannot stand upright! So, the loons push vegetation around to create a floating nest or simply push themselves up on a low shore. How the eggs stay warm enough to hatch is a mystery to me, but somehow it works – and next November we’ll see the results here with more red-throated loons to enjoy.”

Again, here’s the link to the NEW new puzzle I talked about last week.

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.