Category Archives: US Fish Wildlife Service

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Similk Bay Beach Restoration Art

I’ve painted many pieces of art for the Northwest Straits Foundation. They’re the shoreline restoration folks in Bellingham, WA that coordinates the restoration funding with actually getting the job done. And, they often come to me for the final, interpretive panel that explains what they did.

This time it was for Similk Bay along the eastern side of Whidbey Island, just northeast of Deception Pass in Washington State. It’s a very shallow bay, full of critically important eelgrass, but at low tides you could actually drive on it – it was that shallow. And people did drive on it! For years they used a small launch ramp right here, running over the eelgrass with its crabs, young salmon, forage fish, all manner of fragile aquatic life. Then: why are the crabs gone? Where are the fish?

There were people disgruntled to loose their launch pad, but sometimes progress backward is good. Below was my five-minute concept sketch. I put it in the design program to see how it fit with some text. Pretty well, I thought.

Below is my refined sketch. You can see how it’s basically it’s the same drawing, but all the details are now worked out. It still changed a lot before the final color version. All of this, including the final painting, took less than a month.

And here it is in the design program. It fits pretty well. I wrote the text, as I often do, but it was altered many times as all good writing is a collaboration before it’s final publication.

And below is the site where this printed panel will live. Cars drove right down here past the driftwood to launch their boats. The final panel below.


Here’s a sample of the beach, part of my process is to take lots of reference photos. I needed this in the studio later to figure out how the beach and bay bottom might look.

And my house model. The old launch ramp is right next to the house. I really enjoy these projects because it allows me to place art where you’d never expect to find it – ON A BEACH SAVING AN ECOSYSTEM! My paintings end up on people’s walls, but they also end up in place like this.

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

And thanks, Lisa, at Northwest Straits Foundation for continuing to support this guy, one man with a brush.

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.

Murals, Nancy Cherry Eifert, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Malheur Refuge Wildlife Painting

This is another painting I did for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon – remember the hostile take-over by the Bundy Clan? This was that place!

I was given some nice leeway on these efforts, so I could add some mental candy, a soft sunset coming to mind here. They were fun paintings to do, because I just plan likw painting wildlife. Below is a detailed version of a section.

It can get very crowded at Malheur, as you can see below. This is one of Nancy’s photos, an amazing mass of wildlife that proves, yes, you still CAN see this sort of thing in America, but only if we pay taxes to keep it this way. Want to see this? Go to Malheur in March or April, get a room in the one-and-only decent motel – and go geese watching. You won’t forget it easily. By the way, these birds are ALL talking while they’re doing this!

Below is the reference painting I worked from, certainly not copying it, but just a ‘feeling’ reference. I did this one for The Nature Conservancy a couple of years ago at the Carson River Project in Nevada. I always liked the softness of this landscape, backed up against the High Sierra. Lake Tahoe is just over the ridge. I think the painting holds together nicely.

And below is the original refined sketch, after the rough concept drawing. This is the step before painting begins, and while it’s certainly not like the final, it comes close enough to call it good at this stage.

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

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.

People Paintings, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Malheur – Swans and the Wadatika

This could be Malheur National Wildlife Refuge – possibly 1000 years ago when the Waditiki Indians lived here, fishing and hunting the marshes during high water periods. It’s from the perspective of the Trumpeter Swans, Canada geese and ducks the Indians hunted. Looking down through the birds you see the tule and cattail houses and boats, and people going about their daily lives. I like the feeling of a gigantic landscape with a very few humans touching the land lightly. How things have changed!

I finished this painting a few days ago for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. This is one more of that series I’ve been working on seemingly forever, but this one I truly enjoyed, because there was so little guidance from anyone involved. This is another fairly big wayside, 60″ wide, that will be part of 3 at the Buena Vista Overlook south of Burns, Oregon. Here it is in the final form.

And here’s the original sketch of the main painting. Getting the feel of a made-up place, because who knows what it really looked  like then, what the Indians looked like, what they did or how many there were. I think I got it.

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.

Murals, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Malheur – Buena Vista Overlook

I’ve been working on art for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, a continuing effort that’s finally coming together. This wayside panel I just finished is going there, telling the story of springtime water vs. fall desert. It’s been interesting to compare the two scenes – which is a completely fabricated scene. No such place exists, yet it’s at Malheur in many places.

This view is of the spring snowmelt season there, when water from the local mountains fill up this grand valley with ponds and marshes. These lakes are only a couple of feet deep at most, many are less, but the place is crammed with birds either nesting or on their way north. It’s possibly the single most important wildlife refuge in the West.

And this scene shows the same place a few months later. The lakes have dried to an almost desert landscape and the lush foliage of spring has yellowed. It was interesting to figure this out – just the cattails were challenging to understand their life-cycle.

And here is where this and two other waysides are going – Buena Vista Overlook. My new paintings will replace these old and tired ones atop a stunning view of the valley below. These are big panels, each five feet wide. They needed to be big to compete with the scene.

Call this my small effort at using art to fight our current culture of White Terrorists in America. This is the place the Bundy Gang of Thugs took over a few years ago in a Right-wing attack on our heritage. Remember? Yes, this place is OUR heritage – and then the Trump administration  pardoned them when they were sentenced for their crimes. Not enough said – but if you want to save what’s left of these places, VOTE for nature!

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.

Commissioned paintings, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides

Nesting Black Tern

I’m back in the studio working on some paintings for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. Seems like this project has taken years, and it has – like THREE years. But who cares if I get to paint fun stuff like black terns. This painting goes on a big wayside there – I’ll show the design later when I get more completed. 

Malheur is an amazing place at certain times of the year. Spring and Fall, it’s a key focus point for most of the migrants on the Pacific Flyway – they all come together before spreading out for the rest of their journeys. Nancy Cherry Eifert took the photo below of snow geese, and you can easily tell how these big birds got their name. It really does look like a blizzard of birds, doesn’t it? And this was just a small portion of just one group. March was when this was taken, in case you want to go.

If you remember, Malheur was where the Bundy Standoff took place three years ago. I feel a small bit of pride they’re using art to fix the damage done there, and hope the rest of this project will show people this place isn’t just about the absurdity of giving public land, OUR land, to thugs.

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.