Tag Archives: 48 North magazine

New Painting Post

Seahawks – My monthly 48-North story

2014-3-Seahawks

Click the image and read it bigger in your browser.

Okay, okay, I’m not normally into any sort of spectator sports. Can’t see wasting time watching someone else run around when I could be doing it myself – even if it’s far less successful. However, as with everyone else around this part of the country, we got somewhat carried away with the local team that actually won something last month, and so I did sort of an explanatory story on the team’s name. I’d like it better if they called themselves the ospreys, but you’ll have to admit the play on words with Sea – Seattle – Seahawks is pretty good. And,”Go Spreys” doesn’t have much of a magical sound to it anyway.

    And, a football team allowed me to paint one of my favorite birds again – and then do a story about it. Almost worth buying a ticket next year if I wasn’t off in the mountains somewhere doing my own ‘sport’. See the story on the web at 48north.com during March, 2013. At my count, it’s my 38th article for them – almost enough for a book.

Thanks for reading this week.
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

Dungeness Crabs – My 48-North story for January

2014-1-Dungeness-Crabs

Holiday Fresh Dungeness Crab Eating: it’s like a holiday itself and we’ve been doing a lot of it lately. So, besides the crabs, I cooked up a story about them for my monthly page in 48-North magazine that just hit the stores this week. What a lot of work being a crab!

Each year, over a million pounds of Dungeness crab is caught and consumed here in the Salish Sea. Most everyone knows how to catch, cook and eat this tasty crustacean – we use the third and fourth feet for the meat picks – no metal, please. Yet few know the details of a crab’s life – so here goes. They were named after Dungeness, Washington near Sequim on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula, where the first Northwest commercial crab fishery began. Like most creatures with external skeletons, they must shed their hard shells as they grow larger. By carefully backing out of their shells, they moult between May and August, and mating occurs immediately afterwards before the new exoskeleton hardens on the females. This happens when the male begins a physical embrace with the female that lasts for days. With the female tucked underneath the male and oriented so that their abdomens touch, heads facing each other, the ‘love-making’ begins. Try to picture this. I’ll bet you can’t and not smile.

Ah, but life goes on, and several months later the female ‘lays’ her eggs, possibly up to 2.5 million of them. Completely helpless, they remain attached under her abdomen for 3 to 5 more months until they hatch. Then the free-swimming young crabs go through 5 larval stages and about 10 molts over the next 2 years. Male Dungeness crabs reach legal catch size at 3 or 4 years of age, at which time they weight 2 or 3 pounds. They may live for 13 years.

Thanks for reading this week, and Happy New Year. May it be better than the last one. 2013 – RIP.
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

COOTS!

2013-12-Coots

At the request of my editor, here’s my 48 North magazine story on the American Coot for December 2013. It’s a tad bit early, but I liked the illustrations enough to show it off. Everyone thinks coots are just gray and black, but a closer look in the sun and you’ll see all sorts of colors. They’re odd little birds, as the story and illustration explains. Click on it and you’ll see a bigger version in your browser. I’m not kidding about the amazing color of those chicks!

    Climate Change: If you’ve read this stuff before, you’ll know I’ve been working on two large paintings about Climate Change and how it’s effecting Yellowstone. Today I spotted a couple of dozen purple violets in bloom in the yard here in Port Townsend – just as a hummingbird dive-bombed me. Now, it’s been unseasonably clear here and getting down below freezing at night because of it – and now here are these violets! Hummmm. Here I was complaining about the chilly nights. With hummingbirds and violets, what could I possibly have to complain about anything. Life is good!

Thanks for reading this week.
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

October’s Story for 48 North Magazine

2013-10-Turnstones

Click the page to enlarge it in your browser for easier reading.

Shutdown, day 11! While the Park Service may be shut down and leaving us with a bleeding business – and sales and commissions are looking to like someone run over by a tank – and we may be unable to go to parks for research or even get it from the web because all park websites are down (and it’s a bunch, let me tell you), or, for that matter, even go camping for a couple of days and enjoy OUR own parks in OUR country – life goes on. (that’s a bad sentence, I know, but one I’m leaving because it represents some big frustrations) So, here’s my story for 48 North magazine for October about some little birds that just want to be able to exist in a safe and secure place, carry on normal life and be safe. Sounds like us!

PLEASE, ALLOW ME A RANT: I know I’m preaching to the choir here, and probably HALF my readers get this on computers that are currently turned off or even available to be turned on, but I just want to say I’ve appreciated every minute of trying to make an honest living painting nature in national parks. A lot of that has to do with the scenery and our heritage, but even more has to do with the fabulous people we’ve met over the years who work for the government. They’re not all bureaucrats, but scientists, naturalists, people trying to spend their lives making a difference in a good way – and currently they’re draining their savings accounts to pay the bills. Yesterday, Day 10, it was announced that parks and their local communities have lost $750 million dollars in lost revenue THIS WEEK, money that will never be regained or back-paid, and most are in some pretty remote communities that need it.

It seems lost on people who support the Tea Party that Congress’ job is to pass laws that then require spending money, and shutting down government and not paying the bills it already rang up is ludicrous – like buying a car and then refusing to pay for it. I urge everyone to not forget about all this when it comes time to vote the next time!

Thanks for reading this week.

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

Swivel-toes – My Story for July, 2013

If you click the story, it will enlarge for better reading in your browser.

 

 Gee.. July’s almost over and I almost forgot to post my 48-North magazine story for this month – and they already have August ‘in the can.’ Just too much summer in not enough months, doesn’t everyone agree? I was sailing out in Port Townsend Bay a bit ago and saw an osprey dive on a fish. Poetry in motion – a fisherman with perfection. It was truly thrilling to watch. So I cooked up a little story about that bird and the osprey’s amazing ability to successfully land it’s catch on nine out of ten dives. So successful I thought – until some years ago I saw a jealous eagle dive-bomb an osprey in Banff National Park and forced it to release its catch in mid-air, which the eagle then caught on the way down. And they say eagles aren’t as good at fishing as ospreys, but they’re sure better at being bullies.

 

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.

Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

The Artist’s View – Eifert’s 48North Page for June, 2013

Recently we were in the Seattle Aquarium and while Nancy was photographing the yearling sea otter, I spent some time in the tidal tank area with my sketchbook. This is one of my favorite Seattle-places, almost as good as the Woodland Park Zoo. I’ve spent hours in here drawing and just watching life go on in the big salt water exhibits. So, from that came this little sketch showing the community of critters that live there on one of the pilings. This is all raw ocean water that gets piped into the aquarium, and it’s all unfiltered so much of the marine life comes in naturally. As I was drawing this, I realized everything in front of me was either trying to eat everyone else, or trying to just hide so as to not be eaten. What a scary place to live – so I wrote about it for my monthly story in 48-North magazine.

And here’s my original sketch before I added watercolor to it as an underlay. Lets see: plumose anemones, kelp crabs, pile perch, acorn barnacles, ochre star, little brown barnacles and a hermit crab or two. Got it!

And just in case you missed it last week, here’s our newest puzzle, “A Walk on the Wild Side” for Fort Townsend State Park, the old-growth forest park near us here on the Olympic Peninsula. Check it out here on the website. And thanks, everyone, for the initial interest in this new interpretive puzzle. Very gratifying.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to. And you can follow me on Facebook where I just posted a new hiking album.

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.

Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

Sea Lions – My 48-North article for May

Geez: I turned in my monthly offering for June and realized I hadn’t posted my story for May. 

The page should enlarge for easier reading if you click on it. This story is about one of the other big carnivore-predators around the Pacific Northwest (besides us) – and how these big guys keep getting in the way. It’s the good, the bad and some ugly all rolled into 225 words. The photo below was the inspiration and reference I used for the initial illustration. This is the “Big Red Can” that’s just offshore at Port Townsend’s Point Hudson harbor entrance. I’ve seen more sea lions on this thing than I can count. I was sailing out there a couple of days ago and a very large male was ‘laying out’ on the top, just like my little watercolor shows. As I sailed past, he didn’t even wake up. I could almost hear him snoring – 1000 lbs of snoring. Check out the entire magazine online at: 48 North, I’m on page 33.

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.

Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

It’s Not a Seagull – It’s a Gull

You heard it here first!. Due to random and across the board federal cuts by Tea Party conservatives who were sent to Congress to shake things up and shut the country down, the word Seagull now no longer exists and has been shortened to the word ‘gull’, therefore saving three letters or 42% of the name. Read it and weep.

What a sad state of affairs, but I’m just saying I saw this coming, and, so, wrote and illustrated a story about this tragedy for my monthly 48-North magazine page. This seems to fit into the current scheme of America, of cutting things that didn’t need cutting just because they already existed. But you know how it goes these days. I read last week that the House of Representatives is conducting hearings to finally, I mean FINALLY determine if meteors exist or not, so this seagull-thing seems trivial when compared to that problem. Just to let you know, there was no solid decision on the meteor-thing.

One the other hand, it is Nancy’s birthday week and yesterday we went on a delightful 5-mile old-growth forest hike in 50+ degree weather and both felt joyful to be alive and healthy (I mean, let the gulls sort out their own issues). She wrote a really nice blog about photographing owls (backyard and otherwise) that you can see here.  (nancycherryeifert.com/wordpress)

This week: I finally have the Point Reyes mural finished and two more of Virginia’s book up, but the gulls were far more important – don’t you agree?

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

Feather Dusters – A Worm’s Tale

This is my monthly page in 48 North magazine for February, 2013. You can browse the entire magazine online at the link.

So, we were at the Seattle Aquarium recently and Nancy was photographing the young sea otter, Sequi (she’s shot an entire sequence of the baby for over a year now). I was down in the tide pool room, poking around at the shrubbery in the open tanks – a real crowd of critters. I was reminded of some paintings I did for Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska last year. A ranger at the park, Chad Soiseth (hope I remembered how to spell your last name, Chad), sent me some reference shots of tube worms to paint from, and they were amazingly larger than the 4-6″ locals here in the Salish Sea. At the aquarium,  most people were looking at the star fish and anemones, but there I was, of course, sticking my finger in the tube worms. It just seemed to be a painting waiting to happen, and so it did. The sequence was: kids poking starfish, then poking anemones, but no one cares about these cool worms. So, maybe I should paint THOSE guys for my monthly page – and so it went.

I truly believe, and thanks to my family,  have always believed, that the job of an artist or writer is to not only to create good, competent and skillful work, but to push the viewer to a sense of wonder about something bigger, something larger than just the thing you made. Viewers should be taken to someplace that expands their world, not just ends at the viewing process. It’s not enough to just express myself on paper or canvas, but I try to figure out a way to make people say “wow, I never realized THAT, and maybe I should begin to care and wonder more than I do.”

And the subject doesn’t have to be physically ‘big’. Even a 6″ tube worm will do if the viewer has either never seen it before or seen it in quiet this way – or for that matter, even realized they didn’t care to even look. I sometimes reach too far in my complexity and forget most Americans are pretty clueless about nature, and so I have to reel myself in and go back to some basics. It would have been easy to paint and write about starfish, which everyone knows something about. But a feather duster tube worm?

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

The Amazing Giant Pacific Octopus

Click the illustration and it should enlarge in your browser so you can read it better.

This is my January 2013 sketchbook page in 48-North magazine. A diver in Seattle recently hauled one of these critters ashore and it caused a big uproar, mainly because it happened right at a seaside city park. There are two much-beloved octopi-adults in the Seattle Aquarium, and the fact this diver-guy took one home for dinner didn’t sit very well with always-nice and extremely liberal Seattle.

So, with that swirling around the local news, I thought I’d do a little illustration and essay about these critters that I THOUGHT I knew about. Little did I know! It was a pity I only had 200 words of text because the giant Pacific octopus is about the craziest animal I’ve ever read about – and that’s saying a lot because I’ve spent my life doing this stuff. To me, it’s enough that they only have two bones in their entire body, but their sex life appears to be the stuff of legends.

As if the essay and sketch page above isn’t interesting enough, like the 14-FOOT arm span or shark and clam dinners, there was even better stuff I had to leave out. Such as: during mating, the male releases a ‘sperm bag’ that’s 3 FEET long, which he then approaches the female with and using one of its 7-foot long arms gently inserts it into her. He gets to do this several times with multiple partners if he’s lucky, but basically that’s it for him – and he dies soon after. When the female gives birth to the 100,000 little octos, they’re all attached to a long ‘rope’ that she ‘hangs up’ in her den. She then fastidiously and constantly grooms this until the kids hatch, where upon she dies as well. Oh, and I could go on, but as my editor said, “I can hardly wait to see the illustration … or not!”

I’m telling you, I never get tired of learning about this stuff, but this time it left my mouth slightly slacked.

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.