Tag Archives: Easel Paintings

New Painting Post

Low Tide – Butter Clam

Walking on the beach in town the other morning, I spotted this open shell and thought it just needed to be in a painting. It wasn’t the shell so much as the little ripples in the beach itself. As the tide goes below normal low, these quiet muddy beaches become exposed to us, showing all sorts of stuff not commonly seen. One of the most interesting parts of them, to me, are these little swales set up by the gentle wave action. These are only about 12″ apart and an inch deep, and they clearly show the soft wave energy in where normal “surf” is about 4″ high. Trough, hill, trough, hill – and on into the beach. It makes for an interesting subject to paint. In an hour, this scene was gone from view, covered by the next inbound tide.

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.

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

Magnificent Frigatebirds

This time it’s another graphite and watercolor illustration for John Vigor’s article in Good Old Boat magazine. Magnificent Frigatebirds aren’t new to us, but I never get to paint them – and they sure aren’t around Port Townsend. We’ve seen them while we were camping on the beaches in Mexico, we saw them often while we sailed Ave Mariadown the Baja Coast and up into the Sea of Cortez. Just last year we saw them at Everglades National Park, soaring over the mosquitoes at Flamingo.

These birds are real aerial pirates that never, I mean never, land on water. They soar endlessly along oceanic coastlines even as they sleep. In fact, the only other bird species known to spend days AND nights in flight is the common swift. But being amazingly good at one thing usually means we’re goofy at anything else, and so the frigatebird cannot walk, swim or take off from a flat surface (we’re talking about jumping off a cliff ). Frigatebirds sport a very wicked upper bill that angles down like a fish hook, enabling the birds to latch onto morsels as they fly by, or, they steal it from other birds (chicks in nests included). At 90 inches, frigatebirds have the longest wingspan relative to weight of any bird on the planet. The reddish throat pouch-thingy on males inflates during courtship or while the male is nest-sitting, giving them a rather bizarre look. When I saw a kid (centuries ago) I remember they were called “Man O’war” after the old frigates, which the big birds use to follow for food scrapes.

And you all thought I was just a painter.

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.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Calm Corner of the Hoh

Forgot to post this when I painted it – but it’s never too late for new art, right? This little painting was created with me in the camp chair, paints balanced on my knee – glass of wine nearby. Life was good.

On the Olympic’s west side, the Hoh River is a pretty messy place. Just below our campsite was this little backwater. Big water from the rainiest mountains in the United States tear out enormous trees and drag them along, crashing into the shore and causing all sorts of mayhem. A tree could be dragged along in periodic storms for decades until they finally come to rest in places like this, backwaters that stack up the 8′ diameter trees like cordwood. For the next hundred years or more they’ll slowly decompose, create rich habitat for all sorts of birds and animals, and shelter young salmon. Without these big trees in this wild river, the Hoh wouldn’t be as ecologically healthy as it is. It’s quite a place – to put it mildly.

This original painting is watercolor and ink on paper, 9″ x 12″ and $125 unframed.
If you’re interested in a frame, we can do that too. 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

Red Alder Leaves

Leaves, leaves, leaves.

That’s what my life is about these days – especially big-leafed maple leaves. About the size of a dinner plate (some are platter-sized), our enormous southside maple STILL has a few thousand leaves to drop. And the red alders have barely begun to even think about it. Don’t get me started. I love this forest place of ours, but this time of year the trees are definitely in charge of my life. Autumn blows comes though, I vacuum them up with the mower and haul’um down to the huge compost pile. In a couple of years they’ll magically transform into the best mulch money could buy. The garden loves it, but getting the process started is what I’m painting about today. Maybe paying homage to them will hasten the process.

Got to run. Leaves are awaitin’.

If you’re interested in this original mixed media on paper, just send me an email.

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

Covergirl Schooner Adventuress

Cover Art Schooner Adventuress

48 North magazine in Seattle has always been very good to me, and this month is no exception. It was Wooden Boat Festival time here in Port Townsend, and so, just as they did last year, one of my paintings landed on the magazine’s cover. They do a good job in these days of struggling print magazines, but now 48 has begun to move into the digital world. It’s now entirely online and free. Check it out. Only thing lacking this month is a story by me. To see past stories, check our website archives.

The timing of this worked out pretty well, because the original painting is still available. SO, I’ll shamelessly pitch it here. You were waiting for that anyway, weren’t you?

Adventuress at Union Wharf is acrylic on board, 14″ x 20″ and $1000 unframed.
A nice triple matted frame and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you want a custom frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print. Lean on me for the non-gallery discount.
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.

***previous*** — ***next***

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

The Sound of Falling Water

Sure, the Northwest has all those  grand peaks, glaciers and giant trees, ocean beaches and alpine lakes, but for me it’s these little seasonal waterfalls that always get me going.

I think it’s the fact they’re always different, always changing – and mostly temporary. As winter snows melt, hundreds of valleys, cliff faces and forest slopes echo with a cacophony of pure and cold rushing melt water, all of it seemingly too eager to get down to the sea. This is a very noisy place, and I really don’t care if I sound anthropomorphic or maybe sentimental – for me, these waterfalls are alive. Most of the time these little streams cross our trail under a little bridge or log instead of our having to slog through it, and this gives me a place to study the motion, blur, colors and mossy rocks inthe spray zone. Most of these little channels are dry by mid-August, but, because we’ve had a cool and wet past few weeks, they’ve begun again in earnest. Sure it rains a bit up here, but this is what you get. It’s not all that bad.

So, I’m not there at the moment. And neither are you. Look at the painting again and let’s pretend we’re standing on that nearby log. Close your eyes and listen. Hear it? The rush of water over rocks, a blur of sounds, the smell of nearby warm hemlock in sun. I live for this stuff!

This acrylic is 14″ x 20″ on paperboard and is offered  for $790 unframed, but if you lean on me I’ll toss in a nice frame to boot.
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

Dipper on the North Fork

A Larger Painting today.We’ve added some names from Gallery Nine in Port Townsend, so if you’re getting this email and don’t know what it is, this is the weekly art-blog for painter-writer Larry Eifert. Don’t want it? Just unsubscribe below. I sent it about once a week.

North Fork of the Sol Duc River. Now this is a special place. No one goes here because the trail doesn’t GO anywhere and today’s peak-bagging goal-oriented hikers  hate that. No lake, no peak, no stunning overlook – just miles and miles of stately old-growth forest and rushing river awaiting. Elk, deer, salmon – and lots of dippers like this one.

The Sol Duc is about 70 miles west of here in Olympic National Park. After hiking over a hill for about a mile from the Sol Duc road, we put on our water shoes and forded the river that was up to our thighs. Cold – but absolutely delightful – and these two natural barriers are what also help to keep most hikers out. On the other side, with hiking boots back on, we ambled up the trail beside the river. Sometimes we were down on bedrock, other times up in maple glades festooned with hanging club moss and occasionally up onto deeply forested benches with enormous trees. There’s a lot of bedrock basalt exposed along the river, creating punchbowl effects and some very deep pools (like the painting). It’s a place to just sit and listen to the endless harmonies of water over stones, wind high in the 300′ hemlocks – and think about how lucky it is we still  have these places.

Click the images to enlarge them.

This original painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 22″ x 28″ and is offered for $790 unframed.
We can custom frame this for you in any style you’d like using our wholesale framing discounts (meaning you’ll save about 75% of what a normal custom framer would charge).  This is the original painting, NOT a print. However, we offer custom prints as large as 50 inches on the shortest side.
Email us for details in your interested.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was published 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

Four Rowboats – An Interesting Print Project

(You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

Recently, I was commissioned to make a custom canvas print of this painting. It was an interesting process that I want to share.

The original acrylic (in my hands) is only 14″ x 20″, and thankfully I still owned it. This would not have been as easy if I had to ship it back from an owner in, say, Florida. I scanned it in four pieces at 350% and high resolution on my flatbed scanner, pieced it back together in Photoshop, and then carefully cleaned it up at great magnification. It finished out at over 800mbs uncompressed, or MORE than an entire CD’s worth of data in one file. How much is all that? It would mean each person in the country could have about 2.5 pieces of this image with some left over.

My printer-guy, ColorOne in Seattle, said: “just send it over via the web.” Never sent so large a file, mainly because our funky Internet company here can’t even bill us properly, but I compressed it to 577mb and there it went with a button push and the finger’s crossed. FIVE HOURS AND TWENTY TWO MINUTES LATER it made it to someplace in cyberspace. Probably took five minutes to download it over in Seattle, 40 miles away, but they got it in one piece – and matched the colors perfectly. The resolution is so good on the canvas that it’s difficult to tell it’s not an a real painting, and it has a varnished finish like an glazed oil. Amazing technology – and the folks at ColorOne are very good at . Let’s see. The side of a bus for the next one?

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.

If you just hate this stuff and want to unsubscribe, just hit the return button and let me know.

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.