Tag Archives: Easel Paintings

New Painting Post

Clipchuck

We somehow managed a couple of partial weeks of hiking in the North Cascades – known as the American Alps and for good reason. When driving over the North Cascades Highway just south of the Canadian border and drop down off Rainy and Washington Passes, there are several USFS campgrounds before you hit the summer heat of Winthrop. Our favorite is at Clipchuck. Each day we’d drive up the dozen or so miles to the cool alpine and hike the lake and pass trails, then return to our campsite high over Early Winters Creek – and this painting is from the picnic table in Site 28. Just walk a few feet upslope and a glorious view of that crashing creek emerges. Walk another step and you’re over the cliff and probably in the creek 100 feet below.

And, yes, the name Early Winters should ring a bell with some older hikers. In the 70’s, it was the first outdoor equipment company that sold products made of Goretex.

One of the hikes here is an 8-mile loop gaining over 2000 vertical feet. Half way around we came to the North Cascades NP boundary and this sign is firmly planted in a snowdrift on Horsefly Pass (click to enlarge it so you can see). I’d love to know who thought it necessary to state in 5-inch letters that hunting isn’t allowed here. Am I missing something? Who would do this climb equivalent to two Empire State Buildings to kill something and then carry it (and the gun) back down the 2000 feet?  But then I’ve never understood the concept of killing wild animals anyway.

This ORIGINAL painting (not the photo) is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $125 unframed.
We have some custom wood frames that makes it a total of $140 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

2011 Olympic NP Bugler cover

Summer’s almost over and I almost forgot to post this while it’s still current.

On September 17, the official ceremony for the removal of the Elwha River dams will kickoff, but I’ve been involved with this for several years now. I was pleased when the park’s summer newspaper (the handout at the park gates) featured a section of one of the two murals I painted showing what this big river might look like a few years from now. In the upper left corner you can see what will remain of the upper Glines Canyon dam when the river will hopefully become one of the largest salmon producing streams (again) on the peninsula.

My task for these paintings was to show how the river and its salmon influence everything else there. Many plants and animals rely on a healthy salmon runs for nutrients. It’s not just the bears and raccoons, herons and jays that eat the spawned-out fish, but as they drag the fish into the forests, this soon becomes ‘fish emulsion’ for the big trees too. The forests provide a stable environment for a new generation of fish, while the fish give back fertilizer when they return. This cycle has been stopped for a full century by the two dams that will soon be gone.

And I’m affected too. Learning this stuff is the best part of painting nature for a living. It’s not just a painting, but more knowledge I get to cram under that size-8 1/4 hat.

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

Cedar Falls Trail – A Picnic Table Painting

A traditional watercolor painting for today. We spent last week hiking on the east side of the North Cascades and each evening I painted on the picnic table in Site 38, Pearrygin Lake State Park. Like everyone else in the West, they’ve experienced record snowpack and with temperatures in the 80’s, the snow is wasting no time getting out of there. And with spring pushed into summer, the flowers were just amazing. All the alpine lakes are still iced up, but these lower trails along the rivers were stunning, with lupine, paintbrush, calypso orchids, chocolate lilies, mountain ash, balsamroot – all of it in bloom at once. So, back in camp I got out the paints to relive the same experience twice.

While on this trail, I did a short little soundscape recording. I’m trying to figure out a way to easily add sound clips to paintings of these blog trail paintings, so here goes.

If you’re reading this from an email, try this: Cedar-falls-soundscape

If you’re reading this on the internet blog, click this:  Cedar-Falls.amr

Pearrygin Lake is downslope of the North Cascades Highway and south of the Pasayton Wilderness, some of the wildest and most pristine country I know. With over a half million acres, the Pasayton is the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s one of the few places in the Lower 48 where trailhead signs have notices for BOTH grizzlies and wolves. This one was on the South Fork of the Twisp River coming down from North Cascades National Park and caught our eyes. It states hunters need to make sure the dog-species they’re killing is a coyote instead of a wolf. So, why would anyone climb up these steep trails to pull the trigger on a coyote when they’re in most everyone’s backyards – but then hunting anything at all has always baffled me. Doesn’t it seem like we as the now-dominant and planet caretaker species should be beyond that sort of mayhem?

Thanks for reading this week. This painting isn’t for sale just yet. The memories are too good to let it go.
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

Hole-In-The-Wall at Rialto Beach

We were on the road to Moab, Utah for some business and sunny hiking on the slick-rock. Then – the updated weather report said it was going to be in the mid-90’s, and, not wanting to just be normal people, we turned right instead and went out to the cool, wild and always delightful Olympic Coast. Saved a grand in camping and gas, and how could this be any less amazing than where we were originally going? We’ll get to Utah sooner or later, just not this week. And being able to do these things really is what being an artist is all about.

While sitting on the beach between hikes I did a couple of watercolors. This one was on a partially overcast day, so I kept it to only two colors. This is low tide at Hole-In-the-Wall at Rialto Beach – rated #2 in Olympic National Park sights to see. There were only two other people on the beach!

We continued past this area, past the shipwreck stuff, the eagle’s nest and possible Quileute werewolves left over from the Twilight movies that were filmed here, and in about a mile we came to an amazing place. Most hikers on Rialto Beach only go as far as where the painting was created – a couple of miles through often very soft gravel. But if you go another mile around the next point (low tide only and you’d better plan your escape accordingly), you’ll come to a rocky flat tideland “meadow.” I can only call it a meadow because that’s what it appeared to be, like an absolutely flat (not inclining like a beach) alpine meadow below the high-tide line. (click the photo, it should enlarge so you can see it better) This place was an acre at least, and so full of sea life you couldn’t move without squashing a turban shell, or a turban filled with hermit crab. Eel grass and rockweed covered almost every surface which was interesting because eel grass is normally a sand-thing, certainly not on a rocky headland. We couldn’t count the number of seastars, limpets and mussels. Why this area is so rich we could only imagine. At high tide, it has to be only be a few feet deep, so maybe it’s the extra light, slightly warmer water, who knows – but it was hard Olympic bedrock that was flat. From Cabo to Homer, we’ve never seen anything like it in all our tramping around West Coast beaches.

The original watercolor and ink painting of Hole-in-the-Wall is 8″ x 10″ and $100 unframed.
The double mat with custom wood frame makes it a total of $125 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 – and you get the saltwater smudge on the bottom of the paper (not on the painting) for free.
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

Migrating Dunlin – Taking a Break

 

 

We were out on one of the West End Olympic beaches the other day – Beach #2 maybe, and up in the wrack I spotted this little dunlin. It seemed okay, probably just taking a well-deserved rest. What was unusual for us was that it was in the finest breeding form, a suit of clothes we don’t normally get to see over on Puget Sound around Port Townsend – over there we see Fall southbound birds in dull-gray clothes. I’m guessing that it was about half way on the north-bound migratory journey from Mexico to the North Slope of Alaska. There were a couple other dunlin also on the beach, so we assumed this one was with that bunch, and the fact it wasn’t alone felt good to us.

I was struck by the enormity of the scene. Visualize giant and endless sets of waves on a rugged shoreline, piles of drift trees all the way up into the forest where winter storms had easily tossed them, millions upon millions of polished stones and bits of driftwood stretching into the distance in both directions – and this tiny 2-ounce hemispheric traveller that weighs the same as two first class letters was on its way from Mexico to the Arctic. Worthy of a painting? I thought so?

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $125 unframed.
We have nice custom wood frames for $25 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.

Clickhere to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography. She has some current posts of the same trip (ours, not the dunlin’s).

New Painting Post

Barnes Creek Trail – an Ageless Moment

Another sweet old-growth trail painting today. How many of these trails have I been on? I think it’s some genetic throwback to a distant past that compels me to hike just one more of these trails, and then paint the darned thing later (it’s two for one – first the trail experience and then reliving that pleasure in a painting). This one starts on Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, goes gently upslope following the creek past Merrymere Falls (pretty cool in itself) and onto the flanks of Mount Storm King. About two miles out, the trail goes over a little hump past some pretty impressive trees – which is where the inspiration for this painting occurred. Don’t go up there looking for it – these things are never even close to what they actually look like. There I was, waiting for Nancy to photograph some spring flowers – knees in the dirt, head in the ferns as usual. And while I stood there soaking in the forest, I just fell in love with the place – the gentle flow of the trail, the glow of light on a few leaves, the agelessness of it all.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $320 unframed.
A custom wood frame is about $25 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

Demise of a Favorite Bridge

Bark Shanty Bridge – Big Quilcene River: If you’ve been reading these posts for a few years, you might recognize this painting. Recently we hiked the same trail under those same giant trees, the Lower Big Quil a few miles south of us. At just under the three mile mark, first one beautiful old bridge, then Bark Shanty Flat with giant cedars and Doug-firs, and around the bend to a very disheartening sight. Bark Shanty Bridge has been hit by not one, but two giant trees, and the far end is crushed to pieces. It’s cleared away and open to hikers only, but the deed is done and the bridge will soon be history. The Forest Service says it’s letting a contract this summer for a replacement, and if the new bridge on the nearby Dungeness Trail is any example, they’ll do a good job of carefully replacing it with another hand-carved log span. BUT, OUR bridge is soon to be gone – the one I used as the model for this painting. It had real character – a fish net nailed across the tread to improve traction, mossy handrails, notched logs for the cross beams. The Forest Service isn’t sure how old it is, but I’m guessing 1950’s at least – probably not WPA-age because wood just doesn’t last all that long up in those wet forests. As my painterly-life has gone on, this has happened more times than I can count, and I’m beginning to think it’s bad luck – or good luck, maybe, to recognize something beautiful and interesting – and instill some sort of painterly immortality upon it before it’s gone.

The Bark Shanty Bridge the other day. You can see where the trees hit it on the far side, and the splintered spire of the second tree’s base. Evidently during a winter’s high water, the upper sections of both trees then washed back downstream and lodged under the bridge.

We still have prints available of this painting. Here they are on the main website.
Or, you can 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. I think she’s cooking up a blog post of this too.

New Painting Post

North Fork Sol Duc River – Golden Light

(this should enlarge if you click on it)
Anyone who has followed these posts will recognize the river’s name, because I’ve painted images here before. And you may know the name, but I’ll bet few of you have actually hiked beside it or stuck your toes in it – but you should. The Sol Duc is one of those glorious Olympic rivers and runs unblocked for about 75 miles, from the alpine to where it joins the Quillayute just short of the sea. The North Fork is roadless and entirely within Olympic National Park, and has only a trail beside it – and it’s sweet and pure magic to meander among these huge trees and sculptured bedrock. It’s not one of those raging torrents like the Elwha or Hoh with gigantic piles of messy torn out trees blocking every bend, but a very refined and elegant bit of water you just don’t want to leave at the end of a hike. The catch? There’s a half-mile climb between your car and the first ford – a little hump that weeds out the weak. I think there used to be a log bridge, but that’s long gone and in my mind it’s a good thing. Keeps the trail isolated enough so you’ll have it to yourself. We just slip on river sandals and in a minute we were on the trail to paradise, listening to the sounds of falling water and breeze high in the canopy.

This painting is a remembrance of a fine day of hiking. It was time to leave, but there was this one final moment when the sun highlighted the last bend just before the ford. It was a moment to dream about.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 16″ x 20″ and $790 unframed.
I have some nice wood or gold frames for another $30 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 Tide – Cockle

A second shell on the same beach as the post a couple of weeks ago. Okay, I’m hooked on the interesting patterns in the mud and had to do another one – especially with these huge tides we’ve been seeing.

All was gray, green and brown, gray and brown – with the exception of the tiny reddish membranes on the cockle. That subtle red even reflected in the water below the shell. These recent big tides forced us take an afternoon and hike out Dungeness Spit, just to the west of us. Extending 5.5 miles out into the Straits, it’s the longest spit in the country and if there’s a more glorious beach hike, I’m not sure I know where it is. After you get out there a couple of miles, it’s a very wild shore with a big straight-on shore break and that day it was approaching six feet – certainly not the same soft shoreline where this cockle lived it’s long quiet life of possibly 25 years.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on stretched canvas, 8″ x 10″ and $100 unframed.
A nice hardwood frame makes it a total of $130 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.

Another view:
And below is another version of the same painting I thought might be interesting to post. As I paint, sometimes I hit a big question mark. So, I scan it to have a fresh look on the computer screen. Things look completely different on a back-lit screen. It’s like seeing it for the first time, and I can go back into the studio and make some changes. The top painting is the finished effort, while this one was about half way along. Notice the differences?

Thanks for reading this week.
We now have a mobile phone app set up so if you read this from your smartphone, and it should look better. Tell us what you think.
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.