Tag Archives: Easel Paintings

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Hale’iwa Cottage

Back in March we stayed on Oahu’s North Shore, and now I’ve gotten around to painting a little  “thank you” watercolor for the family who graciously allowed us to stay there. The house is an interesting place, and so I thought I’d post it here. The place is about 3 miles or so north of Hale’iwa, that North Shore wide place in the road that’s famous for the shave ice, odd people and giant surfing waves. How big are the waves? Well, right down the road a local surfer was sleeping in his beach-side cabin when a rogue wave came in, smacked the place apart and he awoke to find himself behind his home, surfing up the hill on his bed. He’s lucky to tell the tale.

This little cottage, also oh-so-close to the giant waves, had its lower front windows boarded up because of the same problem. Try sleeping soundly at night with THAT knowledge running around in your head. We were told the place was originally an old WW2 army barracks that was moved here after the war, then remodeled endless times to become a truly old-Hawaii experience. This means it’s a mixture of everything that’s available yet nothing that’s entirely permanent. Nothing fancy, no granite countertops, just a tidy little place like the summer cabins I stayed in as a kid. There’s a long sand beach just down the block where green sea turtles haul out to rest, but the ‘beach’ out front is mostly lava rocks and remnants of an ancient coral reef when sea levels were a bit higher.

For the most part, the entire 808-State (Hawaii area code) isn’t like this anymore. You have to really look for the old Hawaii Nancy and I love – but it’s still here in bits and pieces. The family who remains true to this small and simple old place on the beach is pretty savy, I think, of realizing how to enjoy life.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Here’s a link to our new Bristlecone Pine jigsaw puzzle.

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 images from her Glacier National Park trip are featured. Bears, peaks, loons and foxes, oh my.

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.

Uncategorized

Clark Island and Mount Baker

I ran across this unfinished watercolor in my studio. Clark Island is one of the more remote places in the San Juan Islands, about 40 miles north of here. Very few people ever stop here, but I sure have. Boaters all seem more interested in getting to the bars in Friday Harbor or Roche, or the beaches on Sucia Island. Nancy calls it the herding instinct.

So, I was anchored here in our little boat, just around the corner to the left, and went ashore to do this painting – it was maybe five years ago. As I sat there, I remember a single wasp landing on the water glass. And then another. And then a whole family – and then some. Well, time to leave, which I did at a somewhat rapid pace after dumping over the water with my shoe. I figured it was the fresh water they were going after. Fresh water’s actually a pretty rare commodity here on these rocky islets, and in summer it doesn’t often rain. That was enough for me to just say to myself that I’d finish this thing later.

And so I just did! Pretty fun, like I was back there again enjoying this quiet little anchorage with the wasps and a very big view of Mount Baker. And if someone asks, as they sometimes do, “just how long did it take to do this painting” I can honestly say “oh, about five years”.

This ORIGINAL painting is old watercolor and new ink on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ and $239 unframed. (that works out to be something like $50 a year, or about $4 per month. Typical artist wages!
A nice mahogany frame that’s double-matted makes it a total of $279 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.

Uncategorized

Old Fir at Fort Flagler

I’m still on this pen, ink with watercolor-thing. I recently received an email about one of these I did back in the 1970’s that someone recently purchased in an estate sale, and it jogged my memory that they were fun to do. So, we’ll go a bit more with this.

We trailer-camped beside this stately old Douglas-fir last week. We had planned on a little camp-hike into the Olympics, but rain got in the way (oh, RAIN? in the Olympics – in JUNE?), so we simply drove over to Fort Flagler on Marrowstone Island just east of here. The Rain Shadow Effect was doing its thing, and the sun was out. We could see the rain right over across Port Townsend Bay, where it stayed, but here it was clear, soft and nice, so I got busy with the paints. Long  cool later afternoon shadows, tall spring grass that hadn’t been trimmed and a few crows flying overhead.

There are lots of old-growth trees here, but here in the lee of giant mountains, they never grew huge. You can tell they’re old trees because the lowest 8 feet or so are all fire scarred and pocked with woodpecker holes. A dead giveaway. And the reason they’re still here? This is old fort was one of the many ringing Point Wilson, gateway to Puget Sound, and they guarded it from the bad guys a century ago. The forts never fired a shot in defence, but they never cut many of the trees either, preferring to use them as camouflage for the big guns. The guns were melted down and turned into tanks in the next war, and the state of Washington turned the forts into parks. A great idea, don’t you think?

This ORIGINAL painting is watercolor and ink on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ that fits a 16″ x 20″ matted frame. It’s $239 unframed.
A dark mahogany frame with a double mat makes it a total of $279 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.

Next post I’ll have the new Bristlecone Pine jigsaw puzzle to brag about, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was posted 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.

Uncategorized

Low Tide Chimacum Creek Estuary

 

Right down the hill.

No kidding – a two-minute walk. When we moved here a decade ago, the sellers didn’t even mention it. On our first walk down the hill, we were stunned to find this place! It’s a salmon stream (thanks in part to the locals that placed hatch boxes here years ago to renew the fish), and we now get something like 1000 chum salmon each year, and they spawn right around this first bend. Coho are here too, moving upstream to nest in other areas. We can come down here on incoming tides and see family groups coming upstream to perform their last living acts to create the next generation. Dark shapes in merky water, carrying the eggs of tomorrow’s fish.

This is a tidal area, connected to the bay and salt water a half-mile downstream, and so these mud flats appear, then disappear, every six hours as the water leaves and then returns. Herons cruise the shorelines and belted kingfishers fight for their bit of watery turf – yak, yak, yak, yak. Otters are here, along with bobcats, bear and cougar, racoons and eagles. It’s a busy place. And yet, up on the high banks on both sides, people live in houses, chickens and lawnmowers can be heard in backyards, kids go to school and dogs bark – all completely unconnected to this vibrant community right below them. It’s almost as if there are two parallel universes here, with few interactions between them. It’s only when a bear competes with a berry picker, or the cougar forgets and walks down the street in plain view of picture windows are there any interactions between wild and unwild. “DO something about the bear in my berry patch” the woman wrote in Letters to the Editor.” “Like what”, I wondered, “make his share his berries?”

Low Tide is an ORIGINAL painting is another watercolor and ink on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ and $239 unframed.
A dark mahogany double-matted frame makes it a total of $279 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. I can email you a photo of it framed, but we didn’t want to junk up this post with it. 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 posted 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.

Uncategorized

Point Wilson – Spring Driftpile redo

(It appears my server decided to only send this out to just a few on the mailing list, so we’re doing it again. I apologize if you got this twice.)

I’ve always enjoyed the vibrancy of watercolor and India ink. It was a style I learned early-on as a kid, and I’ve never tired of it. On our recent little “drive around the block”, I tried doing some of these in the car while underway, and it wasn’t easy. No, I didn’t draw and drive (as a friend said).

And so, I thought I’d continue here in my studio and on location. A bit more steady of hand, I’d say. The fun part for me is that I splash the paint on with very few indicators or sketch marks. It looks positively awful at that stage, but the ink layer brings it all together, and the image appears almost by itself. The pen I use is a green Cross, originally made decades ago when I bought it new. The first gold point it had I wore down to a nub, so that the lines looked like a felt pen. Oh, and it leaked all over the place, forcing me to keep a towl always at the ready. I dearly loved that tool, and was more than happy when I found out that Cross gladly rebuilds old pens – and for no charge. Now, it’s going strong with a major rebuild. Feels like an old friend.

This ORIGINAL watercolor and ink painting is on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ and $240 unframed.
A double-mat and mahogany frame makes it a total of $279 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 see this post on the blog page, along with all the other posts.

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. There’s some great new flower images from  her garden.

Uncategorized

Road Trip – A Fantastic, Intriguing Place

Well, that was fun. 3200 miles in 6 ½ days and 12 states. Everything from a spring blizzard on the Continental Divide to thunderstorms along the Missouri. We then camped in De Soto Beach Park near Tampa, Gulf side of Florida. This place was voted the number one beach in the US a few years ago, but we enjoyed the backside of our campsite, a mangrove tidal swamp with wildlife everywhere. Mangroves are crazy plants, with little muddy breathing fingers waving at the sky and roots attached to the trunks half way up the trunk.

 We then headed south to Big Cypress (great closeups of alligators) and Everglades (great closeups of no-see’ms). Didn’t get to see a crocodile or panther, but saw two anhingas, a bunch of swallow-tailed kites and almost countless skimmers out in the Gulf at Flamingo. South Florida still has a good charm about her if you know where to look, and even though the hurricane crunched Chocoloskee, it’s still very funky and fun. I recommend it for a view of ‘old’ Florida. Google Earth has some wonderful photos if you’re interested in that isolated patch of land. The entire town is built on an Indian shell mound. The 100-yr old Smallwood Store is still there and functioning. So far it’s all been good, with our new trailer just as fun as we thought it would be. We’re getting 17.5mpg with the air conditioning on, and in the afternoons, the air better be on!

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Uncategorized

Crows Going, Going…

Each evening I see them, about 25 to 30  – northwestern crows, all heading someplace for the night. As the sun sets behind the Olympic Mountains, this bunch comes out of Chimacum Creek estuary, goes right over our meadow and moves on to someplace only known to the crows. As they go by, they’re constantly exchanging hoarse caws and croaks. I imagine it to be something like “What did you do today?” or “Boy that cockle was sure good, and I got it and not you, caw, caw, caw!” Or possibly “Who decided we had to head this direction every evening? Who’s in charge of this murder of crows anyway?”

Northwestern crows are a different species than the normal American crow. Slightly smaller and completely focused on the saltwater shorelines of the Pacific Northwest, we often see these birds doing what they’ve learned to do to make their living. At low tide, northwestern crows rummage around beach rocks until they find an unsuspecting clam. Dislodging it, a bird will fly straight up about thirty feet and let it drop onto the rocks below. It may take more than one try, but once the shell has broken or even just cracked, the crow has dinner. It’s evidently a learned trait that young crows are taught, because we’ll see adults showing the kids how to go about it. Dinner on the half-shell.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on paper board, 5″ x 7 1/2″ and is $85 unframed.
This wood frame and a double mat 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. Other mats and frames are also available.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
While I painted this in my studio back home, we’re currently in Hawaii on Oahu’s North Shore – and watching some amazing waves. Thanks, Jeff! Your kama’ina home is lovely. I’ll try to send some photos of these in a few days. It takes some kind of crazy person with a death wish to go out there and ride those monsters – and I sure wish it were me!

Larry Eifert

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.

Uncategorized

“Vanna White” – 20 Years Remembered

Painted just last year, my two best friends, “Vanna White” and Nancy in an interpretive painting for Olympic National Park. For decades to come, visitors will see but not fully understand what this painting represents to us.

I’m greaving  today over a separation from my second best friend, “Vanna White”. For 20 years and a third of a million miles, as a research vehicle I’ve driven this VW Westfalia Camper to just about every park in the Western United States. We’ve camped in her in places you wouldn’t think a 2-wheeled car could go,  talked to her like a person, and some people thought I would be buried in her – a ready-made coffin! 

One favorite story is the burned-up water pump-event north of Bakersfield. We got her stopped before the engine blew up, and were hauled into town by a good-hearted Chicano tow operator. Saturday night, all shops were closed (and there’s almost no civilized camping in Bakerfield), so he took us over to a friend’s house for the night, where we slept in the driveway in a neighborhood filled with Spanish-speaking kids and dogs. Early morning, our new friend found a pump somewhere and had it in by nightfall –  and event that included tasty food being brought over by the neighbors. I remember lots of fried chicken and lots of kids, all very interested in who we were and what we did. Vanna was like that – drawing a crowd no matter where we landed.

Now, while my Dad would buy a new car every three years no matter what, we camped more times than I can count in Vanna during the past 7,300 days, from Mexican beaches to Banff in the Canadian Rockies. I wrote park guides in her, painted watercolors on picnic tables and woke up with snow on the roof.  Burning through 17,000 gallons of gas, most parts were replaced as we went along. Cosmetic surgery and new paint (by me – after all, I am an artist and own a spray rig), but also a new engine, transmission, three clutches, four or five water pumps, three stereos and more carpets than I can remember. And, like another Vanna White we all have known for decades, she just never seemed to age!

2006: Here’s Vanna next to a 90′ mural we were working on in 29 Palms California. We painted two murals here, a decade apart, and Vanna was there both times.

And so, after driving her a distance of from here to the Moon and half way back, we recently decided to find her a new home. It didn’t take long!  Just a couple of days on Craigs List and yesterday Vanna went off to Portland with a delightful younger couple who, we’re sure, will have the time of their lives continuing on with this same boundless spirit of adventure. AND, I’ve been told of a local support group I can go to of former Westfalia owners.

And why did we do this heart-wrenching thing? Well, we now have a little Scamp trailer waiting for us in the Tampa area. That’ll be a 6,600 mile trip to bring her home – and a good start on the next 340,000-mile adventure!

Vanna on her last adventure with us. California’s Anza Borrego Desert State Park, December 2009.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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.

Uncategorized

Singing Marsh Wren

I’m still working on the mural project for that Carson River, Nevada visitor center. A singing marsh wren is featured, so this is a warm-up painting. It’s sitting in some cattails, so I needed some research for those too. These (in the painting) are a late fall variety, where the seeds have dried and are being blown off by storm winds – but the strap-like leaves are still hanging in there. I like the way the wren’s fluffed-up chest and throat mimics the cattail fluff.

Singing Marsh Wren
 This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
The gold 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 our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently.

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