Tag Archives: Alpine

New Painting Post

Curving Around The Little Tarn

Click to enlarge.

A new painting today. Seems like each Fall I go into this frenzy of painting alpine images, of trails and water, mountains and meadows – of places I wish I still was. There will be more, I promise. I really like the solid feel this trail has, as if summer dust is inches deep. With a summer like the one we’ve had, I sure needed to include dust. Nancy and I went up a trail a couple of weeks ago that wasn’t the most pleasant – too hot, too much weight, maybe too old for too hot and heavy – but I’m not complaining. It was paradise for both of us.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed, my price before it gets to the gallery. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print. I have other frames.
Email us for details.

This is one of those ‘little tarns’ in the Olympic Mountains. A favorite of mine, because you can see the purity of its evolution, how the snow pocket to the right might have been another of these, or one in the process of being born. The little lake has a life that’s entire directed by the little rock ledge that creates a nice little waterfall. Eventually, the falls will erode the rock, the lake will vanish into a meadow.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email 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 rather amazing photographs

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

New Painting Post

Royal Basin – Upper Meadows

Royal-Basin-Meadows

Just one more of my recent summer alpine series – please? I’m happy to say almost all of these current paintings are now sold. In August, I had most of a day to roam the meadows of this area, and it seems to have had a profound effect on what I want to paint – at least for now. Royal Basin, Olympic National Park: there were evidently seven individual glaciers that came into one as it flowed down this single valley, and each headwall has developed its own personality. This one had a huge view of the adjoining valley and peak, Mt Clark – and the views were stunning, so I developed a painting around this feeling of meadow-walking. I just want to somehow walk here again – and if it’s with a painting, so be it.

Royal-Basin-Meadows-framed

DETAILS:

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
The custom frame has a triple liner and glass (and actually, I think the frame is more pecan-colored in real life). Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.

AND: as I publish this, amazingly the painting on the last blog post is still available. I can put them both together and offer a discount – but all the other 10 recent small paintings are now sold. Email us for details.

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

The Way Trail

Obstruction_waytrail

Sorry, it’s sold.

Clicking either image should enlarge in your browser. 

It’s called “The Way Trail” because it’s not a normally-maintained path. The best trails are way trails, and it’s another from my alpine experiences this summer. That’s the Bailey Range in Olympic National Park, meadows around Obstruction Point and near the little lake we call “Lake Nancy” (since it’s not named on any map, we’re calling it this after you-know-who).  We were up there recently and watched the sky turn orange before sunset, which seemed to match the late-summer paintbrush still in bloom at our feet. It was a soft memory, the kind I love to paint.

Waytrail-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
I have other frames if you’d like and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.

And, I still have last week’s painting available and will give a discount if you buy both. See last week’s here. All the other eight I recently posted are sold – sorry.

Email us for details.

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

Wildflower Heaven

 

The past four days: Nancy and I did something we’ve never done. In our hurry to hike every high-country trail, climb to every lookout, paint or photograph every park, we’ve never just walked out there and plopped ourselves in the meadows and spent days just soaking it up like we lived there. It’s always such a hurry with us we never get to just sit and smell the Sitka valerian (very sour). So, that’s what we did – just walked out there and sat down at about the 6000′ feet level – and I’d say it was nothing short of heaven. John Muir said go to the mountains and get their good tidings. We did!

 

There’s this high rocky road, some say the highest in Washington State, that goes off from Hurricane Ridge in the Olympics and in 10 miles or so traverses the most glorious alpine landscape I think I know of. We heard murmurrings that after a seriously big snow winter, this week was the best flower show – but that was a serious understatement. I took three flower books – figured out most but some just weren’t listed. You see, the eastern Olympics are a place unlike any other. Isolated from the rest of the continent like an island in the sky, you can see Olympics-only marmots, chipmunks, violets, hairbells and lots of others, only found here. Red, pink, orange and purple were the meadows. Some, like the photo below looked like snow. Nancy sat herself down next to a marmot family’s communal den system and got some great closeup shots of marmot pups testing their restling skills, and I just went off and found flowers I still have no idea what they’re called.

 Avalanche Lilies

What’s the definition of heaven in this life? I’d say it would be sitting in the middle of this field of avalanche lilies – but I’m just an artist, painter of wild places and still can’t get enough of it. You: go, go now. They’re still there.

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

Heather Pass

I painted this back in October, 2011 when we were in Washington’s North Cascades. It made it past the scan, into a frame, into the blog – but I never hit the “Post” button. For the last eight months the canvas has just sat there in my studio and also on the blog software – and the title stares at me each time I start the program. “ME, ME, Post ME” it screams, but each week I’ve sent out something else I thought was more interesting. But, now that the High-Country around the West is melting out and trails are beginning to open up, maybe it’s time to show this one.

Here’s what I wrote all those months ago, thinking I would post it then:

Heather Pass is a good 3-mile climb in the North Cascades, and while we’ve been here twice, neither were in late afternoon when the sun was doing this yellow-orange-thing. The last time we were here, there was a lone hiker camped just below this heather-filled bench, and I envyed him for his upcoming sunset and evening solitary view. Beside his single tent was a back-packer’s expresso maker, and this little spring runoff stream in the painting would be his coffee water the next morning. If there’s a reason why spending the night in a place wouldn’t be anything but glorious, I can’t think of it.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $140 unframed.
A custom wood frame makes it a total of $180 and 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

Acres of Glacial Lilies – It’s Finally Summer

On August 6th, the park finally opened the road out to Olympic National Park’s Obstruction Pass. From the acres of cars and people at tourist-center Hurricane Ridge, as soon as we hit the dirt road we transended into acres of glacial lilies and almost no cars or people. It’s amazing how park visitors all clump together in herds.

With the drifts still melting on one of the largest snowpacks on record, neither of us have ever seen such an amazing display of alpine flowers. It’s not just summer August flowers, but spring glacier and fawn lilies to mid-summer tiger lilies. The place is awash in perfume, and as we sat on the edge of this field of color I watched a big bumblebee slowly weaving around like it was drunk, going from one bisort bloom to the next, completely ignoring all the other species. So, was this bisort Sunday, followed by lily Monday and paintbrush Tuesday?

Click to enlarge both images.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $120 unframed.
The nice wooden frame makes it a total of $145 and 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

The Marmots of Hurricane Hill

A local project this week. Olympic National Park is just to the southwest of us, we see the snow shining on the peaks just a few miles away. The Olympic Peninsula is a biological island, with water on three sides and lowland on the fourth, so Olympic’s alpine is really isolated from the rest of the continent. Because of this, there are at least twenty-three plants and animals that are only found here – although a couple are on Vancouver Island peaks too. Take a walk in the alpine and you’ll see nature you can’t see anywhere else. One of these is the Olympic marmot, a big meadow-living woodchuck that spends its summers eating sedges and grasses as it prepares for the next 8 months of underground sleeping. We often see these guys hanging out on their den “front porches”, watching for preditors. But recently, their meadows have been changing – and not for the better. One might say the neighborhood has been going to the dogs (coyotes).

So this bit of art will alert visitors as they climb the Hurricane Hill trail to watch for a rare critter that is in trouble. Climate Change? Well, the Park might not say this, but I see thousands of brand new little confers invading the upper meadows, where trees haven’t been before. It’s like winters aren’t as harsh, the growing season just a bit longer. More trees equal better cover for lowland coyotes to sneak through as they go after the marmots. And the coyotes are here since the wolves have been exterminated!

For me, it’s another chance to learn more about nature – and figure out how to illustrate it so you can too.

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

Meadows

 

Late winter and all this is under gobs of snow right now, but one of the nice things about being a painter is that I can create a moment in time, even if it’s a fantasy. Each day I receive a bunch of blogs from artist friends around the country, and lately they have been full of wistful wishes of warm beaches, rocky summer coastlines, even one from a desert island. So I created my idea of a bit of summer heaven too.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $120 unframed.
We can also frame this if you’d like. Ask us about details. 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

Golden Aspen Grove

We were in Glacier National Park recently, enjoying the trails before all the tourists arrived. Late one afternoon we were looping around Swiftcurrent Trail and coming back into Many Glacier and the campground – and came into a very pleasant aspen grove. Now, we have aspen here at home too, just a few that are stragglers probably from the North Cascades, but this was a really old grove. Aspens usually grow in avalanche chutes where they have little competition. They all bond together with a common root system that helps stop the winter snow’s attempts to yank them out. Because of the avalanches, they grow all contorted and never get very big, but here was a bottomland grove of beautiful large trees. It was like strolling beneath a golden yellow canopy of fluttering confetti. Lovely.

This watercolor and ink painting is on paper, 8.5″ x 12.5″ and $125 unframed.
A nice dark mahogany frame with a double mat makes it a total of $150 and 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

Penstemons in the Alpine

 

While we had an amazingly warm winter, the warmest on record, it’s now Junuary in the Northwest. There is still TOO MUCH SNOW in the Olympics for any descent hiking, and we were just over in Glacier National Park in Montana, and the Going-to-the-Sun Road is STILL closed with 20′ drifts in the upper pass.  It’s driving us crazy, and I’m eager, no, almost frantic, to get into some summertime alpine meadows again.

I want to sit down on these rocks next to this little stream (wherever it is) and listen to the sounds of the slow-moving bumblebees making the rounds of spring alpine flowers. I want to take it in, each subtle color and texture on every alpine sedge and lichen, flower or glacier-smooth rock with its Ice Age grooves aiming downhill. Smells, those alpine smells – flower perfume of paintbrush and cornlily. Sour aroma of Sitka valerian. The tangy bittersweet of alpine willow in sun. You know this stuff too, or should, and once you’re bitten by the alpine meadow bug, winters become unbearably longer and hiking books burden your shelves. At least it does at our place.

Penstemons  – This original painting is watercolor and ink, 6″ x 9″ and $125 unframed.
A dark mahogany double-matted frame makes it a total of $149 and 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

I left this out of the last post, but if you’d like a direct link to buy the new Bristlecone Pine puzzle, here it is.

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.