Tag Archives: Easel Paintings

New Painting Post

My New Portfolio Is Ready To Erupt

For some years now I have had a cd Powerpoint portfolio I send to clients, parks and contractors who give me these great commissions painting nature. Keeping the thing current has always been a challenge, but nothing like I used to deal with back in the dark days when things weren’t digital. It’s a great way to present what I might do for future projects or references of what I have painted, printed and produced. I also had a second disk for some of my easel paintings that was wildly out of control, so recently I’ve been working on a new version of all of it. This new one is a composite of both portfolios, and at 147 pages, it’s almost a book. I’ve also put it all together into one big presentation and divide it into clickable sections with a Table of Contents for easy viewing. So, there are murals, wayside exhibits, big walls, dainty ink drawings, watercolors, acrylic paintings on canvas, publications and other stuff like jigsaw puzzles and posters, nature guides and tours – the works, and all on one little disk.

 

It’s now ready to fly, so if you’re a park interpreter, design firm for nature interpretation and installations, past client or just interested in a copy (free) to have ‘just in case’, I can now mail one out to you. Just hit the reply key and give me the scoop, but please, no requests from my easel painting collectors. Sorry, but how much time do I have for this when I’d rather be painting?

 

And, a brand new 500-piece jigsaw puzzle is coming out this week, so stay tuned, oh my many faithful puzzle people. This one is of the mural I painted for Kenai Fjords National Park in Seward, Alaska. It shows the ecosystem emerging from the melting toe of Exit Glacier, and the only other place you’re going to be able to buy it is at the new Visitor Center there or through Alaska Geographic. So, it’s either a luxury cruise, a long flight and a rented car, OR, you’ll be able to get it from us! Come to think of it, options one and two don’t sound all that bad.

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

Rialto Beach Float

 

 Quite a pile of wood, don’t you think? This new painting was inspired by the few days we spent kicking around the Olympic Beaches of Rialto, Ruby and Third Beach a few weeks ago. Each time we hike this stretch of beach north out to some of the best tide pools anywhere, I’m struck by the designs of all these dead Sitka Spruce trees that line the high-tide mark. It’s quite a jumble, and I finally came to grips with how to paint it. I don’t think it’s quite finished, but I heard some comments on my NOT posting last week – “and I hope you’re Okay?” So in the spirit of almost 200 posts in 200 weeks, finished or not – here it is.

On the same beach we saw many (like 8 in one view) drift floats with Japanese characters on them, along with other tsunami trash like the grapefruit juice container I blogged about a few weeks ago – and so I thought I should add that to the painting too. Look in the lower left-center. The actual float was much bigger, but if you look carefully on the photo below you can see the Japanese maker’s marks just above the seam. This one was just coming into the surf, and I had to do a fancy dance to get it ashore. Radioactive? I hoped not.

This ORIGINAL painting “Rialto Beach Float” is varnished acrylic on hardboard, 24″ x 48″ and $1200 unframed.
Because we have a wholesale account with the frame suppliers, we can also supply a custom frame to match it at much less than your local framer. 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. She just opened a new show at Gallery Nine in Port Townsend this month.

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

The Dosewallips – Spring Runoff

Click on the painting and it should enlarge in your browser.

No presketch on this one, so I can’t show you the process – it seemed pretty clear so I just started painting. After Nancy posted our exploits along the Northeast Olympic’s Dosewallips River a few days ago, and thereby beat me to a post about its stunning beauty, I put aside a couple of more serious projects to finish this painting up. I was moved by the late afternoon sun was streaming through the canyon and really lighting up the streamside alders. It just seemed like a painting, which it now is. With a big snow pack upslope quickly turning to water, the river was loud, frantic, seemingly in a very great hurry to hit the ocean just a few miles downstream to the east. What a place! What a place to live – and paint!

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished board, 24″ x 48″ and is offered here for $1200 framed. 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. Can you hear the river’s roar?
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

Yellow Rowboat

Click on the painting and it should enlarge in your browser.

A classic double-seat rowboat with a wineglass stern of the Whitehall design, this is one of many similar boats at Lake Union’s Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. I just love the two blue paint swipes on the oars – the only paint anywhere on the boat, and masked off to hit the water at just the right angle when someone is rowing with them.

For me, it’s a painterly study of reflections and bounced light, the subtle way varnished wood both brightens wood color, and reflects the glow of sky light. If you know me, you understand I think of these historic craft as sculpture, the perfect union of form and function. There’s nothing frilly on this boat at all, and every piece of wood is there for a purpose that’s been worked out through trial-and-error. Yet there isn’t a single thing that was put on to make it more beautiful for the sake of beauty. It doesn’t need it. Even the cotton (not synthetic) string holding the asymmetrical oarlocks to the boat has a graceful arch. Some say art should be thought-provoking and culturally relevant of today’s society. I’d say this is just that, showing how far we’ve fallen from the desire to create functional beauty – but don’t get me started about today’s constant mantra of cheaper-is-better.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on board, 14″ x 20″. The custom gold frame with linen liner has a second inside gold edging that measures at 18″ x 24″ on the outside.
Including the gold frame as you see it here, Yellow Rowboats is offered for $690. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. 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. Her sea otters are hot. She had a feature color front page story and inside as well this week in the Olympic Peninsula’s Peninsula Daily News.

New Painting Post

Low Tide

Low Tide Clouds

After all the past big mural posts, this week it’s a simple painting. I love constructing small stories into paintings, especially these little calm inlets of saltwater around the Northwest. If you read this blog, you’ll see these fairly often. Not much tells a story here except the reflections of the hillside conifers and the high bank in sunlight, yet there’s a lot crammed into this, but, then again, not really. Northwest glacial rubble, firs and hemlock on the shore, partly cloudy, shallow clouds with blue sky breaking through. Minus tide. Logs on the far beach, not much kelp on the rocks so it must be winter. That’s it – a story painted into a 9″ x 12″ rectangle.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″.
A custom wood frame makes it a total of $330 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

Low Water at Point Wilson

Low-Water-at-Point-Wilson

This is, I think, one of the most intriguing places here in our little town of Port Townsend, and I’ve painted it often. Every container ship, submarine, aircraft carrier, sailboat or killer whale going into Puget Sound has to go right by here, and at low tide it’s a pretty dramatic and busy place. On a recent walk, we were here on a minus tide, just before the big rush of water began that would completely submerge this spot, so I spent a few minutes of peace and quite, unusual without waves or noise -just a perfect moment to compose a painting.

I get LOTS of comments on this blog about my painting process. Do I paint on location (well, certainly not when it’s 45 degrees), do I work from a photo (it’s just a basic starting point, like a sketch where I can remember details)? So here’s the reference photo I took with my phone-camera. An interesting transformation from photo to painting, don’t you think? Where’d the kelp go? Well, after working with it on the sketch, I realized kelp was completely unnecessary and made the rocks look like mush. Better to focus on the luminousity of the water instead. I say, learn to spot a locked door and climb in a window instead!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on hardboard, 22″ x 28″ and $700 unframed.
We have some good frames for this one, but it’s a big enough painting that we’ll figure that out when you buy it. It’s going into a show at Gallery Nine, so if you’d like it, better jump quickly. Not that I’m bragging, but the last one went in 20 minutes and there were five who wanted it. This is the original painting, NOT a print and it’s being sold without the gallery commission. There will soon be prints of this on the website for our normal prices – here’s an example of another one).
Email us for details if you’re interested.

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. She’s just posted a blog about the new sea otter pup at the Seattle Aquarium. Amazing.

New Painting Post

A Brown Pelican – Really?

Brown pelican in the Boat Haven!

Thanks to DDT, by 1970 the California brown pelican was almost gone from the West Coast of the United States. Even today, these great fishermen with a wingspan of 6.5 feet only nest on the Channel Islands off Los Angeles. Sometimes, but not often, a few migrate northward during the late summer.

So, imagine my amazement when Nancy spotted one here in Port Townsend in the middle of January – and while it was snowing to boot. There he was, down in the marina right under the fish boat dock awaiting the next toss-out of not-so-good fish. And he probably wasn’t cold either, as the water this time of year is a full 20 degrees warmer than the air.

So, like the journalist that I am, here’s a little painting of Port Townsend’s wintering brown pelican. My hat’s off to him! And my hat’s off to Rachel Carson, an old family friend who stood up to the chemical industry over 50 years ago so this bird could eventually make its way to Port  Townsend in January, 2012.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on paper, 7″ x 10″ and $85 unframed.

A nice custom frame with a double mat and glass makes it a total of $110 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

Going to Lewis Lake

This is another painting from late summer – and possibly my favorite from the past few months. Just haven’t had time to post it.

“Going to Lewis Lake” not, “Taking the trail to Lewis Lake” – because there isn’t one (the trail, that is). In fact, we didn’t make it to Lewis Lake because the snowy boulder hopping was a bit much and we didn’t have our ice gear. Not that I minded – the view right here was as far as we got and was sure worth the climb, Lewis Lake or not. If there’s anything I love dearly to paint, it’s an alpine landscape with all sorts of craggy angles and snow in both sun and shade. The North Cascades are my idea of  painterly paradise.

I’ve thought a lot about why this is a beautiful image to me, and I’m pretty sure it’s partly the idea that these landscapes are delicately fragile and gigantically solid – soft and deadly, both at the same time. It’s not a place you can relax. Contrast the little soft-stemmed alpine lupine and paintbrush to places still snow-covered – to the ominous sounds of distant rockfall as thawing ice loosens yet another boulder. It’s a place of wildly grand contrasts painters love, at least I do, even if it was difficult to find a place to sit and compose a future painting without squashing an entire little alpine garden.

I’ve decided to hang on to this one for a bit – just because I like it so much. So, at the moment it’s not for sale. We don’t ever really hang art in our own home, mainly because we have mostly big windows and almost no walls – but this one found its way to one of the few spots, and I enjoy reliving this grand hiking experience every time I see it. 

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

This Guy Also Lives Here

This is the last post of the year for me, so I want to thank everyone for all your  comments, thoughts and, of course, purchases. While it’s not a-painting-a-day blog like some of my friends, I’ve still managed at least one a week for a lot of years now. It’s been a great way to stay connected.

Downy woodpeckers live here with us in our little patch of forest. They tend to prefer mixed woods with conifers and deciduous trees like our cedars and hemlocks, maples and alders. Here they’ve they set up housekeeping in some of our carefully preserved dead snags we leave standing just for this purpose. We see them on our suet feeder all year where I get up-close and personal views of how they look. This one’s a red-topped male I know well.

The downy is amazingly similar to the hairy woodpecker we have here too – almost identical except a tad larger. They’re actually not very closely related, making the two a great example of convergent evolution in which two separate species that live in the same place and do the same thing evolve, over time, to look the same. When I learn this, I immediately want to know how long this took, and what did the two birds look like originally before they migrated into these great Northwestern forests. Don’t you want to know?

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $120 unframed. A custom wood frame 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.