Category Archives: Wildlife

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Cloud of Chickadees

This painting has sold. It’s still good reading and the video is a hoot.

This painting is for sale, so drop me a note at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. Click the image and it should enlarge in your browser. This is an original acrylic painting on canvas, 18″ x 24″. A Certificate of Authentication is included, but I’m not broadcasting the price so I can show this on Youtube and Facebook. Frame options are available, and I’ll ship it in a double-boxed crate.

Below is a short video with me talking about this painting and the process.

This painting is an appreciation to a chestnut-backed chickadee family that has kept us company here for many years. They’re not the same birds, of course, but each year a few new ones appear, the ‘cast’ evolves – but it’s still about a half a dozen that hang together as one flock. They spend their time poking around for seeds and bugs, staying together for safety, but each morning after I fill the tray feeder they’re on it instantly, dodging squirrels and the bigger varied thrushes. This painting is sort of a snapshot, a moment in time as I saw it in February, with early miner’s lettuce leaves just beginning to come up through last fall’s alder and cherry leaves.

Here’s the log model I worked from.

Below are some enlargements of the painting, mainly for phone viewing.

 

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.

Murals, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

I’m free: 540 days of Everglades paintings

I started this project June 29th, 2021. That’s 542 days start to finish. It took that long to complete 24 paintings for Everglades National Park, but the painting part only took a fraction of that! Meetings, waiting, more meetings. So, here’s the last one, 108″ x 48″ that will be installed along along the Anhinga Trail Boardwalk in the Royal Palms area. It’ll  have text tastefully spread across it, two languages both English and Spanish. All these photos should enlarge in your browser.

  • No, these paintings are not the only stuff I’ve painted in 542 days.
  • Yes, I also painted dozens of other images for state parks, national parks, a bunch of salmon recovery groups.
  • Yes, these will all be reproduced in aluminum with steel frames around them.
  • Yes, it’s not only me doing this, as I’m part of a team from EDX in Seattle and they are doing many more wayside panels than just mine.
  • One trip there was with EDX. A second trip was just Nancy and I this last spring to pick up more material I needed.

There is already another painting here, one that’s 30 years old, so my new painting will be replacing it. What’s the difference, besides age? Times change. Today, the alien snakes, pythons and Anacondas people have released into the Everglades have killed off many of the species that were in that old painting! Pretty much gone are the raccoons and otters, the ecosystem is changing. So, I’m just upgrading this to the current and future world.


And here’s the scene from the boardwalk. I think I got it fairly well.

And sitting on the railing throughout my first recon photo session, this immature cormorant just sat there as he got his clothes straightened out. I could walk right up to him.

And of course, this guy was hanging out under the pilings.  The Anhinga Trail is truly one of the best places in Everglades National Park to see wildlife, almost guaranteed.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Early Paintings, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Everglades National Park – Plentiful Fish wayside

I’m now finishing up all 24 paintings for Everglades National Park. I went there twice in the past 2 years to get it all straight in my head, and now the final paintings are coming together. Here’s number 19, a story about fish. Putting art with words, I’ve become better at it, but it’s still much more difficult than when I just painted landscapes.

I have a little note on my website (larryeifert.com)  that asks to see old paintings if you have them.  I get some interesting submissions, and this one just arrived from John Van Spyk who said he inherited this. Dated 1989, it’s now 33 years old. I painted hundreds of these small landscapes back then, taking my painting kit out along roadsides and going to work. I could do several of these a day and sold them in the Eifert Gallery in the little town of Ferndale. Here’s another one I recently received from Judy Salter. Both of these are watercolors, and I think they’ve stood the text of time pretty well.

But now I’m into much more complicated efforts – and still enjoy it. Here’s the evolution of the fish painting: the original concept sketch, then the beginning of the colored chapter, and finally again the final. It didn’t change all that much, did it?

Location photos for the painting during a Florida rainly day. There’s Sherry, part of the design and production team.

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.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Sand Verbena Moth

I went on vacation – from making art.  It’s been years since I did that, maybe never. I’ve been a working artist for over half a century and I can’t remember ever just, well, stopping – I worried I’d forget how to do it.

I’m now back in the saddle and painting from a long list of patient people waiting – and this wayside panel is soon going to my local park, Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, Washington. Here’s the original concept sketch.

This park is a beautiful place, but all is not paradise here – alien plants are everywhere. European dune grass and Scotch broom have infiltrated all over the dunes, choking out natives like the yellow sand verbena that needs shifting dunes to live.  This plant actually has it’s own pollinator. The sand verbena moth was just  discovered in 1995, and it turns out this new-to-us fuzzy creature needs this plant to live, and only this plant. There are only 6 locations in Washington State where it still survives. The moth uses the verbena for everything, from eating flower nectar, to laying its eggs in the same flowers, to the larvae eating the flowers and leaves. The plant, in turn, uses the moth to pollinate it – a symbiotic love affair.

Here’s the sand verbena moth.

The area where the dune restoration is progressing will soon have this wayside sign installed to tell this story, and help keep people off these dunes – and off the verbena and moths. It doesn’t look like an endangered habitat, but it is.

This is, in a nutshell, what I do – I make art to educate and help people to understand their roles in helping nature. I’ve always thought it’s a good reason to make paintings.

And here are my little inset paintings for the lower left area. Fun little studies by themselves.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Everett Washington, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

City of Everett WA Madison Morgan Park

ALL THESE ENLARGE WITH A CLICK

I’ve been painting some outdoor wayside panels for the City of Everett, Washington. This is my 3rd and 4th for Everett, which is north of Seattle and is becoming a real city with some real money to spend on this stuff. But it’s also becoming a ‘real city’, with its nature gone. They have a small nature park in the middle of it and so I’m working on some installations that tell about its nature. Lots of shrub plantings are going on here, putting the place back to some assembly of a native forest.

This is the original concept sketch and you can see how the design really stayed the same as the painting progressed. The boundaries for me were not hemmed in at all, they were just pleased I was doing it.

This panel is sort of a nature guide, birds on the top and animals on the bottom. It was a fun image for me to figure out, as these are all the same critters as we have here in our own little forest just 40 miles to the west on the Olympic Peninsula. And I’ll say this, we have better by far, right here in our own meadow. That makes these paintings show how fortunate Nancy and I are to have these acres of trees and critters that feel safe here. We even have old snags that serve as homes for many.

This is the original finished painting before it went into the design. It takes a variety of skills to make these, design, writing, making art and a deep background of the nature. Somehow it all has to come together to make a dramatic and beautiful piece of art that, hopefully, lots of people will stop and learn something. A bit of art in the forest.

And this is the corner of Madison-Morgan Naturescape Park where these two panels are going. The second wayside is being painted now and is coming soon, so stay tuned. Then between 15 and 20 more are going around Silver Lake in Everett, another urban nature park being spruced up by my stuff. In total, I should have about 24 paintings on panels here that will all last beyond my life – it’s a good legacy.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, National Park Service, People Paintings, Wildlife

Installation Photos San Juan Island murals

Panorama of my 35′ x 17′ tribal wall. Possibly the biggest painting in the Pacific Northwest about prehistoric Indian life before European contact.

While the furniture and other exhibits aren’t installed yet by the good folks at Capitol Museum Services from Manassas, VA, I received these photos from the Park Superintendent, Elexis Fredy, and they’re good enough to pass around. This is at American Camp, San Juan Island National Historical Park in Washington State. Thanks, Lexi, for sending these. I thought I’d show them here because I rarely get to show actual installation shots of the process. I paint this stuff, go home and start the next one.  I know, you’ve seen these paintings before on my blog, but not in the actual space they were designed for. The back wall is 35 feet across, 17 feet high, the prairie mural is 7 feet across. My part of this is finished, and I’m currently working through 35 new paintings for other parks.

This secondary mural is 7 feet wide and shows today’s prairie, which is most of American Camp’s landscape. It will have a reader rail with an additional 5 paintings of mine along the bottom.  

I painted my first visitor center exhibit 60 years ago! Not a typo. It wasn’t exactly good, but it was my start, and later I figured I’d not improve much if I went to art school and learned to paint like everyone else – so instead, I just got to work. It’s been a long and most interesting path, to put it mildly. It used to be that I’d travel to the site, get a room to live in or camp, and start painting. Sometimes it’d take weeks, a couple of projects took more than a month. The food was generally awful, and it wasn’t easy, living out of a suitcase. One, a huge project in the Denver International Airport, meant I had to clear security each day, have ALL the materials xrayed, get crazy badges and walk to work going beneath 747’s that had just landed from Germany.

Today, this has all evolved to a much more civilized process. I get to paint in my studio at a smaller size, send a digital file that is then printed on vinyl and actually looks better than the original. The installation in this new building will show off my stuff for many decades, probably upwards of a half a century and be seen by people long after I’m gone. If the place burns to the ground thanks to domestic terrorists, they’ll just put up a new version in the new building (hear that, Bundy Clan). If someone throws acid on it, they can just change out a panel instead of the entire wall.

And here’s the installation crew getting things ready. Better them than me, I’ll say that without hesitation.

A little back story on the art. In 2020, I was commissioned by EDX Exhibits in Seattle to design this wall, and the only real guidelines given were that it should show the real location at South Beach on San Juan Island. I lived on my boat in the 80’s near here, so I already knew the place – and that was of great help). I set the scene of a summer tribal salmon camp, where for centuries families would come to fish and dry salmon – and pick and process camas bulbs that were the two main staples of their diet. It’s a pre-contact scene without iron or steel tools, so it might be any moment in time between 8,000 years ago to about 1700 A.D.

How Did The Process Start?

It was great fun for me to research this, and I’m thankful they gave me almost complete freedom to do what I wanted. It took dozens of site photos, Google Earth views and every Edward Curtis photo I could find to do this. The web has many helpful photos, but some were completely unreliable. The park and tribes checked accuracies of hundreds of details, but not the overall design of people working and meeting on the prairie where the park is today. For example, they had Wool Dogs, a now-extinct breed of canine that were both pets, babysitters and wool sources they trimmed clothing with. There are several in the painting.

The visitor center will open at the end of June 2022 – come out and see it.

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

#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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, National Park Service, People Paintings, Wildlife

Prairie Mural – San Juan Island National Historical Park


I finished my prairie mural for the San Juan Islands National  Historical Park a few days ago. So, I thought I’d pass it around here where I reliably get some feedback – good or bad. A very solitary live I have, painting and just sending this stuff out to wait for time to happen. I think I nailed the landscape well, but I won’t know for awhile. Below are some portions of it, left and right sides.

And below is the sketch. This place is very complex when you actually get down on your knees and look at it. VERY complex. As in, how the heck do I paint THIS? And the real physical place is much more detailed than I attempted.

I wrote this about my project here a few months ago: I have a long history with the San Juan Islands of Washington State. In the 80’s and on my own restored boat, I summered here while I learned to paint (heck, I’m still learning to paint). And now I’m back there making some rather large murals for the new visitor center at the American Camp unit of the National Historical Park down at the island’s south end at Cattle Point and South Beach. Nancy and I went there a few weeks ago, a FOUR ferry ride for us up and back!

This will be printed (the original won’t be on the wall in case the terrorists burn it down) and will be 6′ wide x 5′ high. Surrounding the visitor center is open prairie stuck out on a point with water on both sides – and one of the most beautiful places in the Salish Sea.

I cropped out some detailed sections so you could see the drawing better, but even so it’s a fairly complex bunch of lines. There are glacial erratic boulders that have some strange mossy adaptions, a butterfly only found here, voles and snails, birds and invasive rabbits. Red foxes that are Cascade dark phase colors, lots of black-tailed deer and meadowlarks (a bird we’ve never seen here at home just 30m south) We saw almost everything going in the painting on the site visit.

Here are my drawings for the bottom section. See how much more open it is so it’s understandable. In the color phase it got much more detailed. Truly fun to paint.

Here’s the empty building waiting for these two paintings, plus another dozen smaller ones. Getting the first one finished helps me understand how I’ll handle the color and detail on the others. The big wall is next, 38 feet of it. Thanks, Joe, Sara and Lex at the park for making this a fun and interesting project.

This view of the prairie and Strait shows scenery, but it also has lots of my paintings if you know where to look. From Mount Rainier NP in the very distant background 100 miles away, to state parks and land trust installations in between, I think I probably have 100 paintings in various exhibits and waysides in view here. But who’s counting.

And here’s the 38′ wall with my concept sketch for the next painting. How the heck I show a 38′ wall in a dinky blog post, I’m not even going to try to do. So stay tuned.

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, Wildlife

How Birds Stay Warm in Winter

This was my 48 North magazine story for December, 2021. Since Port Townsend and most of Western Washington are locked in a deep-freeze snow event, I thought it might be interesting to pass this around. Above is the watercolor art, below is the final page of the journal.

And here’s the text for the art:

Baby, it’s cold outside. But compared with some other places, the Arctic, Alaska – the Salish Sea has a fairly balmy winter. So balmy that many thousands of birds migrate here to spend winters in relative comfort. It’s still cold, but birds have adapted and evolved to help them survive our winters. On average, a bird’s body temperature is 104OF, so they’re even more vulnerable to cold than we are. Probably their biggest adaptation is an innate knowledge that if they fly south, it’ll be more comfortable. And there are other physical adaptions to get them to spring. Most birds have the ability to control each one of those thousands of feathers individually – so they can fluff their feathers up to trap warm air between feathers and skin, creating a down coat. You may have seen birds ‘fluffing up’ this time of year in periodic motions.

Most birds also have feet and legs that aren’t as warm-blooded as their bodies. Instead, those parts are mostly bones and skin, so less heat is required than to warm fatty tissues. Legs and feet also have an intricate network of unusual intertwined blood vessels that is a built-in heat transfer system. This creates a counter-current of warm blood passing by the cold returning blood, a heat exchange system that keeps the heat in their bodies’ core instead of trying to keep external parts warm, too. When the cold blood from feet, now somewhat pre-warmed arrives in the core, it’s already back up to nearly body temperature. Other methods: when birds sleep, their bills get tucked under feathers to keep that part warm, but also to inhale warmer air into their lungs, again saving the effort to keep their body core warm. This of it as a down muff. Take a moment on that cold winter morning marina walk and watch these guys. See any ‘fluffing’ going on?

This is the original line drawing it all started with. I saw this gull downtown, leg tucked to keep it warm, nose in its feathers, one eyeball open (sort of). Two nights ago it  hit 16 degrees, just so unlike our normal world here.

Happy Holidays and we welcome you to read along with our art and travels next year. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep stuffing wood in this big black hole.

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.

Commissioned paintings, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Everglades Preliminary Drawings

This is the fishing camp we could have stayed in, accessible only by air boat – but NO, I had to sleep in the Best Western in Homestead, Florida! Yes, I checked it out and the python had left.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a few weeks, but the art has been flowing out of here like a narrow channel after a King Tide. Meaning fast and furious. I was in Everglades National Park in July for a site visit for this and now have all 17 drawings in refined versions finished up. After this, let the paint begin so this gater-guy can admire the installation right next to his home slough.

All these are for outdoor waysides, so they’ll have text blocks.  That’s what the empty white areas are for. I know, it would be better if it was all painting, but these installations will teach people about this place for many decades – long after I’m gone, kids will wander down these boardwalks and maybe learn something. One is bigger, an 8′ wide mural, but I haven’t started that yet.

These are some photos of the site visit. Lots of walking slowly around and talking, the pros telling us Northwesterners the scoop about this rare place. I learned a lot about a lot, from one end of the Sea of Grass to the other.

This drawing is about the strange and wonderful anhinga bird, and it’s actually going ON the anhinga trail. These birds hunt by slowly swimming along underwater and stabbing fish, and I got to watch that in action.

And several pieces of art are about herons. Lots of herons. There are TEN species of herons in this one painting and shows how they follow the receding water level as the season’s change and the ‘river’ dries.

There’s an algae that grows all over the place here. Periphyton. It’s food, shelter and covers the ground pretty much everywhere the shallow water is. It floats, then dives to the bottom, then dries out then the water recedes. All in one painting!

Stay tuned as this project develops. I want to thank the good folks at EDX Exhibits in Seattle for taking another chance on me, for traveling across the country and then still speak to me! Life is good.

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.