Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Golden-crowned Kinglet – Huckleberries

 

Golden-crowned-Kinglet-and-Huckleberries

Not 20 feet out the studio window, Nancy’s blueberry leaves are showing some amazing fall bronze, green and yellow. So, then a little golden-crowned kinglet came along. This painting was just meant to be, I guess. Someone asked me how these small paintings feel to paint after miles of paint on big murals. To tell the truth, what I like is the simple fact they’re not commissions and I have to please someone other than myself. Other than that, it’s all the same, just the brush sizes are different, and maybe the fact that I use my fingers on these – and the back of my hand of the bigger stuff.

 

One of my last posts sold to a past client who bought it for her budding artist grand-daughter. I wrote a little card to go with it which gave me a chance to speak of what I actually liked about the painting, what to look for if I were her. It was fun to think about.

This one? Look at the cool feathers compared to the rest of it, but not ‘cool’ in the 60’s sense. The slight coolness of the bird should make it recede (cool colors generally recede in a painting), but they just blow out at you because the rest of it is so hot.

Golden-crnd-Kinglet-Huckleberries-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.

The custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Outside measurements are about 12″ x 15″ Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up for more posts. I’m trying to expand my list. An email  to me with their address will work.
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, Uncategorized

Calm Corner of the Hoh

Forgot to post this when I painted it – but it’s never too late for new art, right? This little painting was created with me in the camp chair, paints balanced on my knee – glass of wine nearby. Life was good.

On the Olympic’s west side, the Hoh River is a pretty messy place. Just below our campsite was this little backwater. Big water from the rainiest mountains in the United States tear out enormous trees and drag them along, crashing into the shore and causing all sorts of mayhem. A tree could be dragged along in periodic storms for decades until they finally come to rest in places like this, backwaters that stack up the 8′ diameter trees like cordwood. For the next hundred years or more they’ll slowly decompose, create rich habitat for all sorts of birds and animals, and shelter young salmon. Without these big trees in this wild river, the Hoh wouldn’t be as ecologically healthy as it is. It’s quite a place – to put it mildly.

This original painting is watercolor and ink on paper, 9″ x 12″ and $125 unframed.
If you’re interested in a frame, we can do that too. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

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.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Red Alder Leaves

Leaves, leaves, leaves.

That’s what my life is about these days – especially big-leafed maple leaves. About the size of a dinner plate (some are platter-sized), our enormous southside maple STILL has a few thousand leaves to drop. And the red alders have barely begun to even think about it. Don’t get me started. I love this forest place of ours, but this time of year the trees are definitely in charge of my life. Autumn blows comes though, I vacuum them up with the mower and haul’um down to the huge compost pile. In a couple of years they’ll magically transform into the best mulch money could buy. The garden loves it, but getting the process started is what I’m painting about today. Maybe paying homage to them will hasten the process.

Got to run. Leaves are awaitin’.

If you’re interested in this original mixed media on paper, just send me an email.

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.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Pulse of the River Wayside Panel

(image should enlarge with a click)

We’ve been away on a field trip to the Shulman Bristlecone Pine Grove near Bishop, CA for some new paintings soon to come – so I don’t have a fresh painting this week. But it’s glorious Fall here now, with the maples and alders loosing their leaves – so here’s a wayside panel I just received the digital file for. It’s already installed, but I had never seen this in its final digital form.

This one is installed at the same location it was modeled after, right along the river. As you can see in the photo, snow was still on the ground when I did the field research, but along the way the painting turned into a Fall scene with bronzed vine maple and returning salmon. Paintings can do that, while photography has a more difficult time – which means I still have a great job because of 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.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

An Eifert Look to the Marine Life Center

Feiro Marine Life Center gets a dozen Eifert exhibit panels and new “look”.

 (Click the image and it should enlarge)

The Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles Washington. We’ve been working on this for a seven months now, and it’ll be probably another year before it’s completed, but I thought I’d pass some of it around here today.

The place needed some freshening up, so they asked us to help. Much of this is centered around the ‘big deal’ that’s coming down locally in Olympic National Park – the removal of the Elwha River dams, largest dam removal in the US to date – and it really is a big deal, at least around here and at least for me. I’ve been involved with the dams project for several years now as a provider of art showing what the river will look like post-dams, so it was logical I also help create some exhibits about it at the Feiro. Here’s a link to some of that other Elwha River work.

The image above is only the quickie-watercolor concept sketch, but I thought it interesting enough to pass around. Everyone sees the finished products – complex paintings or big visitor center exhibits – but few see where it starts, the basic skin and bones of ideas. And while it may (read: probably) not end up this way at all, it’s a good view into the creative process. So here goes: This wall is actually three times longer than this. It goes off to the left where there are also windows, so to keep it simple, I just focused on this area for a concept sketch. The sign is all they really requested, which includes a changing banner up top for programs. I’ll do all that here in the studio, but the rest will likely be done on-site. We went to the big Seattle Aquarium for some field research into how kelp and fish look underwater, how fish circle, and how light filters down into the ocean. The two herring balls – thousands of little fish circling for protection, will mimic the oval sign, and the octopus encircling the sign shows a popular critter they have in their tanks. There will be more and larger fish, likely salmon, and more extensive bull kelp, but this shows the basic idea.

Stay tuned, I’ll send more as this goes along.

For local readers: Nancy is opening a show of her photography at Gallery Nine in Port Townsend Saturday night, 5:30 to 8pm. Come on down and see her new work.

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.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Visiting My Old-growth Friend

Ohanapecosh Visitor Center – Mount Rainier National Park (click photo to enlarge)

Last week we were over at Mount Rainier and Mt St Helens for a field trip and stopped by the Rainier visitor center where one of my old-growth murals is installed. We hadn’t been there since the Great Flood of 2006 that closed the park for 6 months, and while there remains evidence everywhere of the 18″ of rain in 36 hours, the v.c. looks great. I have never taken good photos of this installation, so Nancy spent some time there doing just that while I filled out some paperwork on annual mural maintenance for the NPS Rangers.

This mural was painted in the Spring of 1995, making it over fifteen years old now. I’m happy to say it looks just as vibrant as when it was installed. It’s acrylic on MDO plywood, and while it was for Ohanapecosh, the forest itself was modeled after the wetter Carbon River Forest over on the opposite side of the mountain. I involved interpretive staff from the other two ‘big’ parks nearby, Olympic and North Cascades, because we wanted to make sure it fit all three. We also planned to create posters, puzzles and cards to sell at all these parks, so species had to fit for all of them. One park has lots of elk, another none, so no elk. Grouse or not? It wasn’t until one guy saw one on the way to work that the grouse was IN. It went that way with about 30 species until everyone was happy – except the painter who didn’t get to paint any elk.

And me? I’m now happy that after 15 years those posters and puzzles are still selling well in all three parks (and many others, including the major redwood parks in California). I’m sure the Rainier non-profit that funded the original painting (and sells the products) has, by now, actually made a profit off the painting they commissioned. And the Chief of Interpretation that originally gave me the commission? He’s retired and lives here in Port Townsend – and has crewed for me in a few sailboat races. It’s a small world that is endlessly big.

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. You can find this poster and puzzle here if you dig.

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

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Covergirl Schooner Adventuress

Cover Art Schooner Adventuress

48 North magazine in Seattle has always been very good to me, and this month is no exception. It was Wooden Boat Festival time here in Port Townsend, and so, just as they did last year, one of my paintings landed on the magazine’s cover. They do a good job in these days of struggling print magazines, but now 48 has begun to move into the digital world. It’s now entirely online and free. Check it out. Only thing lacking this month is a story by me. To see past stories, check our website archives.

The timing of this worked out pretty well, because the original painting is still available. SO, I’ll shamelessly pitch it here. You were waiting for that anyway, weren’t you?

Adventuress at Union Wharf is acrylic on board, 14″ x 20″ and $1000 unframed.
A nice triple matted frame and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you want a custom frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print. Lean on me for the non-gallery discount.
Email us for details.

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.

***previous*** — ***next***

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

The Sound of Falling Water

Sure, the Northwest has all those  grand peaks, glaciers and giant trees, ocean beaches and alpine lakes, but for me it’s these little seasonal waterfalls that always get me going.

I think it’s the fact they’re always different, always changing – and mostly temporary. As winter snows melt, hundreds of valleys, cliff faces and forest slopes echo with a cacophony of pure and cold rushing melt water, all of it seemingly too eager to get down to the sea. This is a very noisy place, and I really don’t care if I sound anthropomorphic or maybe sentimental – for me, these waterfalls are alive. Most of the time these little streams cross our trail under a little bridge or log instead of our having to slog through it, and this gives me a place to study the motion, blur, colors and mossy rocks inthe spray zone. Most of these little channels are dry by mid-August, but, because we’ve had a cool and wet past few weeks, they’ve begun again in earnest. Sure it rains a bit up here, but this is what you get. It’s not all that bad.

So, I’m not there at the moment. And neither are you. Look at the painting again and let’s pretend we’re standing on that nearby log. Close your eyes and listen. Hear it? The rush of water over rocks, a blur of sounds, the smell of nearby warm hemlock in sun. I live for this stuff!

This acrylic is 14″ x 20″ on paperboard and is offered  for $790 unframed, but if you lean on me I’ll toss in a nice frame to boot.
Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

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.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Art in the Old-growth

(Click to enlarge so you can read the text by Janet Scharf, Olympic NP)

‘An art gallery in the woods,’ that’s what I like to call these paintings.

Thanks to the kind folks at the park, I now have 24 paintings, well, reproductions of them, scattered along the road in Olympic National Park’s Sol Duc Valley. This one was one of the first, and until recently I didn’t have a digital file of it for my portfolio. The fabricator finally sent it to me, so now I’m passing it along to all of you. It tells the story of the unseen-by-us happenings in the old-growth when the sun goes down, how all sorts of critters appear and carry on their lives when we’ve all gone home for the day. In the foreground, a flying squirrel is diggin’ ‘shrooms and upon hearing the rustle of forest duff, a northern spotted owl begins its predatory plunge from a high perch. The black-tailed deer is browsing oxalis and isn’t aware of the mountain lion’s stealthy approach. And the marbled murrelet is coming home on the last flight of the day, returning to it’s mossy nest with a load of herring for it’s chick from the distant Pacific 20 miles away.

I’ve always liked the idea of using my paintings to present an interpretive idea or story about nature. I learn about it. I paint it. I pass it along to the next guy. Outdoor fabrication technology is pretty good these days, so this panel will last for decades unless a 500,000-pound tree falls on it (which has happened). I love the thought of a car full of visitors driving up this beautiful road, eyes open in wonder at the scenery and pulling off to read this wayside panel – and suddenly they’re immersed in a painting telling a story about nature they never knew about. I think art should teach and inspire – and then move the viewer to positive future actions. Is this art? I’d say it is.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was posted 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. She has new work up of her garden after a morning rain.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Dipper on the North Fork

A Larger Painting today.We’ve added some names from Gallery Nine in Port Townsend, so if you’re getting this email and don’t know what it is, this is the weekly art-blog for painter-writer Larry Eifert. Don’t want it? Just unsubscribe below. I sent it about once a week.

North Fork of the Sol Duc River. Now this is a special place. No one goes here because the trail doesn’t GO anywhere and today’s peak-bagging goal-oriented hikers  hate that. No lake, no peak, no stunning overlook – just miles and miles of stately old-growth forest and rushing river awaiting. Elk, deer, salmon – and lots of dippers like this one.

The Sol Duc is about 70 miles west of here in Olympic National Park. After hiking over a hill for about a mile from the Sol Duc road, we put on our water shoes and forded the river that was up to our thighs. Cold – but absolutely delightful – and these two natural barriers are what also help to keep most hikers out. On the other side, with hiking boots back on, we ambled up the trail beside the river. Sometimes we were down on bedrock, other times up in maple glades festooned with hanging club moss and occasionally up onto deeply forested benches with enormous trees. There’s a lot of bedrock basalt exposed along the river, creating punchbowl effects and some very deep pools (like the painting). It’s a place to just sit and listen to the endless harmonies of water over stones, wind high in the 300′ hemlocks – and think about how lucky it is we still  have these places.

Click the images to enlarge them.

This original painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 22″ x 28″ and is offered for $790 unframed.
We can custom frame this for you in any style you’d like using our wholesale framing discounts (meaning you’ll save about 75% of what a normal custom framer would charge).  This is the original painting, NOT a print. However, we offer custom prints as large as 50 inches on the shortest side.
Email us for details in your interested.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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