Category Archives: Published painting

New Painting Post, New Published Story, Published painting, Sailing, Wildlife

#118 – My Last 48 North story

When it’s time to paint something else!

I sail around in my little boat (whichever one I have currently – there have been 6 – 6 break-out-another-thousand stands for ‘boat’). It’s a floating studio, and learn about what I’m seeing. I’ve done this for decades, but since 2012, I’ve made one-page art stories of these little journeys for 48 North magazine in Seattle, 118 stories total, once a month without fail.

Anemones, whales, worms, birds, urchins, clams, salmon, it’s all been fair game, researched and painted. Time to do another issue? I just go for a sail and there would always be next month’s story.

This month, I wrote about this guy, a hermit crab – a crab that borrows other shells to live in. Here were the drawings I did to get it started.

Then it turned into this refined page, and I wrote some text to go with it.

This one will be my last. Time to go in another direction, don’t you think? I mean, really, 118!! And some artist’s claim they need, what, motivation or inspiration to get started?

For me, it all started with this issue in 2012. At the time, I had been writing similar stories, but much longer, for 48 North but also the Seattle Times, using my art with the words. It was in that order, write it, then paint it. These sketchbook journals were the opposite. I did the art first.

July 2012-The the  first  issue.

This was a colaboration with Nancy. Her photo, my drawings and words. Our boat!

And at the same time, I made a few covers for them. This one of our boat of the left, 1939 Sea Witch, and the otters that were living there as well. We had geraniums on the dock in summer. Locals will probably recognize those other boats, three historic woodies living together. The guy on the right makes high-end violin bows, the black hulled boat belonged to an architect, and us – painters of nature.

So, all these stories can be found here, or almost all 118 of them, on my website.

It’s been fun, but time to move into other types of paintings and writing. Time to explore other ideas and continue on with these huge National Park Service projects – and, boy, are they piled up awaiting.

More soon. Stay tuned. Feel free to pass this around. People seem to enjoy seeing my process.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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, Published painting, Wildlife

A Story about Painted Anenomes

This is my monthly story for September 2021 in 48 North magazine.  By a quick count, it’s my 111th edition, probably worthy of a book if I had the time to put it together. It’s still fun for me to do, to go out and see something interesting and new that I don’t know about. I  research it and paint it – and I gain more fun knowledge to stuff in my ancient brain. I think it keeps me young!

Here’s the story:

Anemones are mostly stationary animals that have stinging tentacles to subdue prey. Their waving arms then transport the hapless creature to a center mouth where it quickly becomes the next meal. The Painted Anemone, also known as Christmas Anemone, is one of the most common anemones around the San Juan Islands. They feed on crabs, mussels, barnacles and fish. Not every creature is fair game, as the Candy-striped Shrimp (appropriately named), seems to be immune to the sting, and so one can find a candy-stripe next to a painted, neatly tucked into the anemone’s waving arms of death.

Painted Anemones are about five inches tall, drama queen colored and sport about 100 tentacles arranged in circular rows. Somehow, these creatures can attack the relatively huge Sunflower Star, a star that can grow to a three-foot diameter. We don’t need to dive to see these striking animals as they’re commonly seen on a minus tide, drooping or hanging from sheltered rocks like a deflated balloon. They don’t have bones to hold them upright when out of the water. While it seems they’re ‘stuck’ in place, anchored like a plant, if extreme danger threatens, they can ‘unstick’ themselves and move away on foot. It must work, because Painted Anemones can live sixty to eighty years.

And here’s the pencil drawing before the watercolor was added. It’s a quick and really abstract process for me. Not much thought does into it, but then again it’s ALL thought – a free thought from eyes to fingers.


And below is a closeup piece of it to s how how abstract and scribbly it was.  Somehow it all comes together with the paint.

Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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, Published painting, Washington State Parks

Feather Boa – 48 North magazine


With this August 2021 edition, I’ve now done about 110 of these pages, and while I’ve been considering possibly NOT doing any more, I mean, how long can this go on? But I’ve just learned so very much about the Salish Sea by making these pieces of art, researching the details, that I really can’t stop. I see now that you can never learn too much about this stuff, especially in the middle of my seventh decade.  It’s all the fine details about how these things live, how amazing it all is. And besides, it’s really fun to spot something interesting and rush home to write about it – paint it.

Here’s the original drawing, which I did some of while walking Port Townsend’s North Beach at low tide. A VERY low tide, possibly the lowest of the year. All this feather boa kelp was strewn about on the sand, making great abstract forms and shapes.

So, I wrote this in the 2021 August issue of 48 North.

Saw this feather boa on a low-tide beach walk. There was a sandy beach, solid boulders, a place where currents flow –  and all that equals kelp. There are at least 140 types of brown seaweeds here in the Northwest and they all work in similar ways. The permanent base attaches itself to solid underwater rocks. These are usually on underwater reefs and onshore rocks down to about 50 feet deep. If you see kelp floating up ahead of you, there can only be one reason it’s there – ROCKS!

By summer, this plant joins the other kelps in creating real forests of lush green and brown plants waving in the current. While bull kelp stipes (the trunk) and blades (the leaves) can grow 100 feet a season, the feather boa gets to be about 30 feet long, and in my mind it’s the most beautiful of them all. Based on a single velvet-looking stipe about an inch wide, several different types of blades branch off in wild profusion. There are gas-filled bladders that hold the plant up towards the light like little life jackets, single leaves that look like tiny willow leaves, and skinnier lateral branches that look like twigs with smaller blades at each end. The entire thing is shimmery golden brown.

These plants are key habitat to almost countless other creatures and food for many crabs and snails, sea slugs and fish. When you spot feather boas on the beach at low tide, carefully turn over the blades and see what surprises await you. It’s possibly the best reason to come here.

To end, there are lots of parts in this thing. There’s the ‘main stem’ that looks like velcro. Then along the edges are bladders filled with gas so it floats up into the current. The leaves in between provide the photosynthesis to make it live that are all sorts of shapes and sizes, very random. All this on something possibly 20 feet long, and it all grows from a root clinging to an exposed rock, each and every summer!

Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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.

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Published painting, Sailing, Wildlife

Humpback Whales

This art and the story at the bottom were published as my page in 48 North magazine a few months ago, December 2020. I just haven’t found time to publish it here, too.

I tend to put together real-life experiences with my art, and this was a perfect example. It means I get to experience something more than once. A few months before this, I was solo sailing out of the Port Townsend Boat Haven marina, got about 300 yards off shore and first heard it, like a giant woosh of a bus falling driving off a dock. Then a vivid smell of foul rotten fish, lots of it. I instantly knew what this was as we’d had the same experience when Nancy and I sailed in Mexico on another boat we owned for a time.

I turned in the cockpit, and an adult humpback breached again right in front of me on its way going down the waterfront. Let me say here that a humpback has flippers as long as my little 19′ Lightning, never mind the entire whale. Humpbacks, they weight about as much as 20 cars – me and my boat, about 1000lbs. But the whale had other things on its mind than me, and went on past with few seeing it, right down the waterfront full of tourists unaware that a viewing chance in a lifetime was only a few feet away.

Pre-sketches for the art. I was fixated with this humpback eye, a very human-like and soulful look. (I got this off the web, thankfully not in person.

Here’s the text for the story: Last month, a juvenile humpback whale was found on the beach at Marrowstone Island, probably hit by a freighter – so this is sort of a requiem to that whale, but also just to pay homage to a species that’s now returning to the Salish Sea after decades of being missing-in-action. After whaling was outlawed in the 1960’s, after there were only about 1000 humpbacks left along the entire West Coast, this critter has made a healthy comeback. Like the gray whale, these animals spend their summers in the north, then migrate south for the winter – and some are now stopping by the Salish Sea to visit us. They are interesting and smart creatures with complex social lives. They sing memorized songs, and the young quietly whisper these tunes as they’re learning them, possibly to avoid being heard by killer whales. They gather together to fish, blowing bubble clouds from beneath schools of small fish or krill to herd them together like a net – a net of bubbles.

These are big creatures, the size of a school bus and weighing up to 40 tons. That’s as much as 20 cars! It would take a 40’ boat slip to moor one adult. Their flippers can be 16 feet long, the longest arms of any creature and tails can be bigger yet. Interestingly, humpback’s heads are different than most whales, covered with round knobby-like structures. Each knob sports at least one stiff hair and it is thought this might be like a motion sensor, but no one really knows. With gray whales, minke and orcas here, the best way to i.d. a humpback isn’t the ‘hump’, which is not a hump at all but just the way they dive by arching their back, but the enormous flipper arm. If you see one of these whales, appreciate it for its amazing comeback from threat of extinction.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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 Published Story, Published painting, Wildlife

Stubby Rose Anemone

This is another page from my 48 North magazine monthly story series and I’m getting these on my website so there’s a record. This was published last fall. These little efforts aren’t big wall murals or carefully thought out paintings, but more like the art I like to do on backcountry hikes – quick and dirty paintings that are really fun for me. Sketchpad and a pencil.

Below is the text that went with this. I try not to press down with too much science, but some of these monthly efforts are really interesting when I get into them, and just have to pass it on. Anemones are favorite critters of mine, and a good thing since there are many varieties here where I live in the Pacific Northwest. The closest anemone? Probably a half mile from where I write this.

Anemones are predatory sea animals named after land-based flowering plants of the buttercup family. They really do look like flowers! Some can move around, most remain anchored in one place, others float near the surface. Often, anemones line rocks, waving their stinging tentacles in search of passing prey. Many are solitary but some form groups, like a garden in spring. The stubby rose anemone has carved out a life of being mostly buried in sand and gravel, often with only its short tentacles exposed, looking like a 4” wide red or pink pin cushion. Anemones often live in close association with small crabs, fish or other animals to their mutual benefit, each helping the others is subtle ways. When we describe something as an animal, we usually think of cats or bats, deer or mice, but anemones really are animals.  

Muscles and nerves, stomach and mouth, arms and a column for a body – they’re like other animals in many ways. But anemones also have a few things most animals don’t have, like stinging tentacles that help subdue prey. The tentacles are armed with special cells that are defensive and also used to subdue prey. A tiny trigger hair, when brushed, sets off a harpoon that injects a lethal dose of toxin into the victim. Sometimes it’s another anemone and the battle can leave both injured. On a low tide, you can find these interesting animals, yes, animals, in gravelly sand, looking decidedly stressed they await incoming water to let it bloom again. Their stubby rose-colored arms are good descriptors, but there are also dozens of other anemones in the Salish Sea. The stubby rose has just recently been discovered to live here.

My model!

Larry Eifert paints and sails the Pacific Northwest from Port Townsend. His large-scale murals can be seen in many national parks across America, and at larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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, Published painting

Northern Fulmar

Several months ago this story and art were published in my monthly page at 48 North magazine.  Here’s how I started, with a pencil sketch of the bird. Notice the ‘tube bill’ air vent. An adaption to keep seawater out of it’s lungs while still holding prey in it’s open mouth.

It was subtitled “A life in the open ocean” because these birds live out in the open Pacific and far from land for most of the time. It’s a good story.

Here is the text I wrote for the sketchbook painting.

You won’t see these gull-sized birds in Elliot Bay, or as you pass Port Townsend on your way to the big sail to Mexico, but once you take the turn at Neah Bay, you’ll see plenty. They vary in color from white to gray or brown, like gulls, but their behavior is very different with stiff-wings and quick flaps to keep them airborne. Flying close to the water’s surface, they grab prey on the wing, or make quick dives for a morsel just below the surface. Fish, squid, and jellyfish are normal fair, but recently they flock behind seafood factory ships. Fulmars use island sea cliffs to breed, gathering in large colonies to make primitive nests where the female lays one egg. Young take their time maturing and do not breed until they’re 10 years old, making them extremely vulnerable to changes.

We’ve all heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the two growing vortexes of plastics floating around the center of the ocean that is currently about 600,000 square miles in size. As all this plastic grinds together out there, it breaks up into ever-smaller pieces, and guess which birds pick up pieces thinking it’s food? Fulmars fly by and grab, and swallow. Some fulmars have been found to have dozens of plastic things in their stomachs, bottle tops, little plastic shards of bigger items, junk someone bought. While the plastic doesn’t digest, it does fill up a limited space in there, making it impossible for the bird to get enough to eat – or, basically it thinks it’s always full, which, I guess it is. That bottle you carelessly toss overboard, or the plastic bag that gets blown overboard – ALL will eventually get small enough to be eaten by wildlife. Maybe a little fulmar.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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, Published painting, Sailing, Wildlife

Canary Rockfish and Tube-dwelling Anemones

Two new published stories, both in 48 North magazine a couple of months ago, the summer of 2020. This first story was about possibly the showiest and most colorful rockfish in the Pacific Northwest. It is sort of rockfish heaven here, with 17 different species, all somewhat different.

Here’s my sketch before the color version.

My story was about rockfish that can live to be over one hundred and how conservation can actually work using science. Imagine that, using science! BELIEVE IN SCIENCE! By the way, DID YOU VOTE?

Just as their name suggests, these guys prefer to live around rocks. 28 species of rockfish live in the Salish Sea, from 3-inch tide pool dwellers to 3-foot lunkers that live in deeper water and weigh in at 25 pounds. Most are slow-growing and long-lived, some live to be more than a century old. They have a completely different lifestyle from live-fast and die-young salmon. Foraging for other fish, they may swim only a few hundred miles in their lifetime. Rockfish tend to hang out together in groups around rock pinnacles or cliffs, places with lots of tidal current (which helps bring meals to them and not the other way around). Canary rockfish usually have three stripes angling down and backwards on the head, the middle one often runs across the eye. This is a very bright and distinctive fish.

The conservation of this fish is a real success story, and one that shows how science and government work together to make our lives, and the fish’s lives better. After discovering how good rockfish tastes, a definite over-exploitation of these tasty fish began in the 1800’s until canary rockfish were declared overfished in 2000 when it was discovered that rockfish had declined 70% since the 1960’s. Fish and Wildlife submitted a petition to have 14 rockfish species listed under the Endangered Species Act (eventually, all these were not listed). Enter science-based studies of them, plus just plain asking fishermen “where are you catching canary rockfish so we can have you fish elsewhere”. Fishing rules were changed, different gear was introduced and suddenly, in half the time it was thought it hopefully might happen, we have plenty of rockfish.

My second story was about another Northwest creature, one that has adapted to its environment in a beautiful way, but hiding underground from its predators.

A delicate flower-like anemone that is actually an animal. Yes, an animal that you’ll find just beneath your keel in sheltered mud-bottomed bays. While it looks more like a tube worm, this creature is actually related to jellyfish. Confusing, but to me it just shows the complexity of the underwater world we rarely see, and why I enjoy writing this page. These animals appear to have stout tubes below their tentacles waving in currents as they search for bits of food to snag, but they are actually soft and vulnerable. To protect themselves, they burrow into the mud and generate a fibrous string-like material they weave around themselves, almost like they’re knitting a sock. This can extend from above the surface down beside them into the mud as deep as three feet, a woven structure they live in, safe from predators. When one threatens, the anemone quickly pulls itself down into the protective tube.

While many anemones have stout fans of tentacles and large bodies holding them up into the current, this species relies on the mud substrate and a house of its own making. When its main predator, the giant nudibranch, grazes on the anemone’s tentacles, it also lays its eggs right on the outside of the anemone’s tube, putting the young’s first meal close at hand. You might think this would be the end of the anemone, but nature has evolved tentacles aplenty so both species survive. The anemone commonly lives up to 10 years and often congregates in colonies that resemble flower-filled meadows, the tenticles waving as blossoms in a gentle breeze. Flowers they are definitely not, animals are certainly are.

And here’s my original sketch before the color was added. Notice the unfinished part on the right, just part of the process.

I’ve written for this magazine for over a decade now. When it was a sailing journal, they used my art on the covers and published many of my longer stories. It’s a broader publication now, trying to a bigger audience, and it still gives me pleasure to contribute. It was sold to the Port Townsend Northwest Maritime Center a couple of years ago, bringing it closer to my home port where I continue to sail and kayak. It’s a meaningful bit of life to me, experiencing nature here at home and then writing and painting it for others to enjoy.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

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.