Tag Archives: Easel Paintings

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Olympic Chipmunk – Grand Ridge Trail

This new painting is now available, or not – Nancy bought it when she saw me writing this!

It’s an Olympic chipmunk, endemic only to the Olympic Mountains of Washington State, meaning it’s only here in the Olympics. It’s a very small chipmunk species that seems to have a very pointy nose. We see them often on subalpine trails (and it’s not the other chippy down in the lowlands that’s much bigger). I was lucky enough to grab a shot of this one for reference and, since all these trails are still snowed up, this is a dalliance into late summer hiking that’s soon to happen around here. Here’s Nancy spotting the little guy on that big rock, Grand Basin in the background.

Grand Trail, the highest maintained trail in Olympic National Park, is mostly above treeline (where the chipmunks are NOT), but it also drops into the subalpine fir with occasional whitebark pine where these little guys live their lives as they have for generations. Pikas do not live in the Olympics, so I assume Olympic chipmunks replace them in this habitat.

When I walk here, I like to sense how many feet have traveled along this ridgetop before me, all the way back to the Paleo-hunters who would sit here waiting for a mammoth to wander by below them. In those days, the entire Strait was filled with ice, but this high trail was open to observant travelers – just like us.

Sorry, so far the painting isn’t for sale.

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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Pacific Wren – Forest Gatekeeper

We were going down the trail the other day. Are you with me? And this little wren was carrying on an endless mouthy song right in front of us.  We walked right up to it. Not a moment of hesitation with this four-inch brown ball of chatter, its body about the size of my thumb. Right in front of me, it confronted my right to pass as if it owned the place!  Then I had a chance to examine the pile of stuff it was perched on – a Northwest forest for sure, with young wintergreen, ragbag lichens and some kind of leafy moss. I was struck with the complexity and beauty of that bit of complex airborne mat – probably more than I was with the little bird.

A painting like this gives me a chance to look. Not just to see something, but actually to LOOK at it. The details of one small place on our planet, the way twigs and branches combine with moss and lichens to form a dense mat of living softness. Everything here jostles for space, egged on by lots of water falling from the sky. I just like to notice the details, such as how the sky color reflects off leaves, deep earth colors compete with each other, grays and greens combining from sky and foliage.

I put this in a custom mat and hemlock frame. It’s 12″ x 12″ outside measurements. If you’d like this painting, please email me at larry@larryeifert.com.  No gallery commission, so this one is $175 framed as you see it with a bit of postage added on.

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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post

2018-4 Olympics Spring Runoff – Harlequin Ducks

I’m back with new stuff! This new painting is 7″x 10″ acrylic on canvas. Framed as you see it, overall size is about 14″ x 17″. Without gallery commission, I’m offering it here for $195 framed plus some postage.

We see harlequin ducks here in Port Townsend all winter, hanging out along the waterfront and sleeping on rocks. Usually they’re mated couples, occasionally with a kid or two. In April, they head back up into the mountains, find a rushing river and set up shop for another summer in the Olympics.  They’re very colorful ducks, favorites of ours because of the wild places they live. We’ve watched them dive these wild rivers, jump right into seemingly bone-breaking currents, and in fact studies have found these ducks usually have many mended bones that have probably been crushed by slamming into underwater rocks.

This time of year, the streamside alders in the lowlands are just coming into leaf, but up on these mountain rivers, just a few miles inland, it still feels like winter – leaves and catkins are still bound tight against nighttime cold. I could paint wild places like this until I croak – which I plan on doing.

If you’d like this painting, please email me at larry@larryeifert.com. We have all sorts of payment options. No gallery commission, so this one is $195 framed as you see it.

Thanks for reading this week. I’ll have more soon.
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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post, Posts about other stuff, Waysides

Watercolors for Kennesaw Mountain NP in Georgia

I’ve haven’t posted here for awhile. Someone even emailed me to ask if I was Okay – yes, just busy with, wait for it, 9 projects and 54 paintings! No, I’m not the least bit freaked – it’s just life. These two paintings came along this past week and I thought they were nice. It’s not nature as usual, but these are two images that I might have painted in those Northern California years of the 80’s. 

Both these are paintings are watercolor and pencil and show two former homesteads at Kennesaw Mountain NP in Georgia. I’m painting 18 images for new wayside panels there. The log house was researched using one from New Salem State Park in Illinois where I grew up and the references were provided by Delaney Shriner, a childhood chum who still lives there. It’s a ‘dog-trot cabin, two separate houses with a porch connecting them, probably one of the first condos. I like this feeling of ‘oldness’ in how the pencil blends with the paint.

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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post, Waysides

Mules and Horses – Old Spanish National Historic Trail

This will enlarge by clicking it.

While the Hoh Visitor Center mural is proceeding, I did this “little” wayside painting for the Old Spanish Trail with the National Park Service. A fun and very different sort of project for me.

Last year I did this sketch for Aztec Ruins National Monument, but  it wasn’t used. They wanted something less ‘social’. This is Armijo’s Expedition in 1829, a group that went from Santa Fe to California and back, proving this route could be used for trade. In the painting, they’re crossing the Animas River in New Mexico. They’ve had a difficult day herding 150 horses and mules, and the group is setting up camp for the night, beans are in the pot, gear is being unloaded.

To do this painting, I went over to Olympic National  Park and photographed the two ladies that take care of the 34 mules the park uses for backcountry use. Amazing afternoon! Here are Heidi and Jill, seasonal drovers who push those big mules around like they were goats, and you can see I turned them into Spanish young men in the painting. Others models included my neighbor, Michael, who is the cook. Jill and Heidi are in other poses, as well as Henry the mule.

And this is what it’s all about for me. I learned a lot on this project, had a great time figuring out how this might look, how the gear would look in 1829. It took over a year from field trip to Aztec Ruins to painting completion. It went from an installation at Aztec to several other installations along the Old Santa Fe Trail, and I really know about pack mules.

And here’s the Animas River at Aztec New Mexico where the scene is located. It looks exactly the same as it probably did 188 years ago.

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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post

Picnic table painting

Nice fire in the campground, our ancient folding chairs awaiting. The famous ant tablecloth, a real red-cedar old-growth table. Notice the details: painting, brush can, funky Richeson paint tray, artichoke can for water, tablet with reference photos, little pencil sharpener for those wonderful Dixon black wood pencils that feel like the carbon has oil in it – brae and crackers, glass of red. I only stopped because it was getting too dark to paint in this old forest. 

And then the painting that’s appearing. This one is part of the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center project and is 12″ high and 330″ wide when it’s installed. It’s being painted on a roll of polypropylene Yupo tree-free paper that I can roll out to where I’m working on it. I don’t know, why go home until October?

And what are we doing the rest of the time? Section hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail is part of it. Avalanche lilies and bear grass in bloom and still some snow drifts to navigate. We just have to make sure they’re all okay.

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 stunning photography

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

New Published Story

This Month in 48 North Magazine

 

Somehow, I managed to meld together two of my favorites into one article this month in 48North magazine – nature and sailing. Here’s the story:

I’ve watched marbled murrelets for decades, learned their recognizable upturned heads as they slipped past the boat. I also remember the “big mystery” over 40 years ago; no one knew where the murrelet nested. Sure, there were birds seen in the ocean from California to Alaska and throughout the Salish Sea, but no nests were ever found even after a reward was offered. Then in 1974, a tree trimmer stumbled on a downy chick high in an old-growth Douglas-fir. Loggers had seen them, called them ‘fog larks’, but loggers and ornithologists somehow never got together to talk about all this. It turned out the murrelet liked, no, required old-growth forests. They need giant trees with big branches and mossy limbs. So, this football-shaped small 10” seabird soon became center stage in a giant battle between the tree-cutting corporations and environmentalists who realized the bird was doomed if all the big legacy trees were cut. In 1992, the murrelet was Federally listed under the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species.

While most of the old trees are now either protected or gone forever, it appears the bird’s numbers are still declining. This may be because murrelets usually produce one chick every other year. Parents trade nest-sitting duties and adults take turns flying to and from the ocean with a single fish – mostly at dusk and dawn. Youngsters molt into juvenile feathers before leaving the nest, and when the time is right, they simply step off the nest and learn to fly on the way down. If successful, they make their way, unaided, to the ocean. Now, if there was ever a single moment where a species needed a reality check, I think it might be right here. Let’s say you are a little bird the size of a robin that’s never been anywhere. You’re sitting in a tree several hundred feet off the ground. You’re in Mount Rainier National Park and you can’t even SEE the ocean – and yet one day you jump off the nest into thin air. Just saying!

Larry Eifert paints and blogs about wild places at larryeifert.com. His art can be seen in many national parks across America.

And here’s the other ‘favorite’ in my life.

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 stunning photography

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

New Painting Post

Bewicks Wren – Yellow Fern

A new painting.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed. 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.
Email us for details.

Sorry, it’s sold.

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

Rufous-sided Towhee – Our Feeder Buddy

Many of you know that I like to paint from experiences. These birds: they’re just so . . .  full of themselves. Or so it seems. We have a family of these guys here that spend their entire lives not 30 feet from the big six-foot tray feeder. Recently, one, possibly the kid from last year, showed up without it’s long and almost gaudy tail, hobbling around and looking truly messed up. The local sharp-shinned hawk if I had to guess. But in a few weeks there were new tail feathers and the limp was gone. So, here he is in a painting.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed. 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.
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

Alpineglow

Another painting in my ‘Trail Series’. When I was growing up the word ‘alpenglow’ was like an elixir, something akin to magic. For Mid-western flat-landers who only experienced these places on rare occasions, I vividly remember the few times we finally got up there in the Porcupines or Rockies. My parents knew how to do it, to stay late, wait for sundown when the light came – and later drive down the hill in growing darkness. For Virginia, it was as close to  god as it gets.

I now live where I can see this easily, but not all THAT easily. We still have to work for it with a hike, but that elixir is still there when we arrive, that ‘magic-time’ photographer Galen Rowell always spoke of. So, this little painting is one of my favorite ‘alpineglow’ places, right up the hill from home in the Dungeness watershed of the Olympics. At sunset, it’s a place I’d rather be than just about anywhere.

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $149 framed. 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.
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.