Category Archives: Washington State Parks

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

Jr Rangers Art at Deception Pass

March 7, 2020 Brush Man

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.

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Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

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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.

Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Fort Worden State Park panels

September 24, 2019 Brush Man

Wow, I get to paint something local for a change. And the scenes are local, but these were actually painted on a picnic table on the other side of the Cascades at Lake Chelan State Park a few days ago.

These are two of six paintings for a trailside project at my local park, Fort Worden State Park, funded by the Friends of Fort Worden and state parks. The trail wonders beside Chinese Pond and then into a mixed-age conifer forest. These trail panels will be like a little gallery in the forest. It’s been fun to work on something much smaller than what I usually do. I’ll have more soon.

This second painting shows the pond in winter, Nootka roses without leaves or flowers, green grass and flocks of migrant widgeons. There was discussion of the deer – too close, too big, but if anyone has been to Port Townsend, they’d understand how critical it would be to add this one species – THE species here in town. Love them or hate them, it’s life for all of us here.