Tag Archives: featured

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Under the Maple – an acrylic painting

A very personal painting for me, as these birds live with us in our little meadow here. I know them well.

Varied Thrushes are cousins to  American robins, which we also have. They’re at home on the ground in the forest, kicking leaves around looking for insects or berries – while robins tend to live in the open. We have many of these guys right here in our little patch of forest. In Fall through Spring, they can almost disappear when the maples and alders drop their leaves and look exactly the same camouflaged colors. The trillium in bloom shows it’s spring, the big-leaf maple leaves haven’t decomposed yet from last fall, the birds are brighter than normal sporting their breeding colors. I couldn’t resist putting it all together to make a painting based on a Mar’s red base color.

Here’s the link for the little 4-minute video I made about my process.

There wasn’t a sketch for this – I just started painting but with some clear ideas of composition. Here are the two reference photos I took not 100 feet from my studio.

At our place, trilliums tend to group together. I understand ants disperse the sweet seeds pods, so maybe ours are just lazy.

In the trillium reference, you can see dozens of alder catkins on the ground – it’s spring! As I progressed with this, I took a progress photo. No sketch, it helps me to see how it’s going if I look at it on a device, even my phone. In some ways, I like this version as well as the final painting.

This painting is 18″ x 24″ acrylic on canvas, and is available. Email me if you’re interested at larryeifert@gmail.com.  It’s available with the nice Taos school inspired frame and I already have a shipping crate ready to go.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

I’ve been adding new videos to my YouTube Channel here. Most are about my painting process, shot in my studio.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New Painting Post, Wildlife

The Neighborhood – a new painting

2023-3-11 “The Neighborhood” is an acrylic painting on canvas, 30″ x 40″. It’s a little story about the communities of wildlife on the Olympic Peninsula where we live – paint. This has been on my easel for awhile, changing and evolving, sort of like the critters, themselves. We’ve seen over 90 different species here in our forest, but so far not a single elk.

No preliminary sketches were made for this painting – it was laid out as I went along, placing the elk’s nose right in the center-of-interest and everyone else radiated out from there. I set the stage for a place a bit more wet than here in dry-Port Townsend, a rainforest commonly seen just west of here.

Below are some closeup shots of the details.

I made a funny little video of my process with this painting – it’s up now on my YouTube Channel. I think it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself and this one brought tears. Damned easel. I didn’t do much editing to preserve the absurdity of it.

I go into this in my video on my channel here. There are others, too.

Or here: https://youtu.be/Dj3gCVx2U6A

This painting started out as a deer painting, then it quickly evolved into an elk and after remembering the giant bull elk (two of them) I almost ran into last summer not 2 miles from here. It grew into a full-blown ecosystem effort with many critters, all of which are here in our forest – except the spotted owl. That bird has been replaced by a similar character (barred owl) that might take my head off any minute.

Below: besides the elk, there’s a Pacific wren, two black-headed grosbeaks (they nest here in the forest), a downy woodpecker and snowshoe hare.

This painting is 30″ x 40″ acrylic on canvas and is available for sale. Email me at larry@larryeifert.com for information. Framed as you see it here, I’m asking $2300 framed, normal price for this size. No gallery fees.

And we also have this darker frame. Shipping is extra, but we have the crate ready to go.

I also did some still photography of the studio recently for my videos. Here’s a fun shot of the interior where I spend many hours of my life. It should enlarge with a click.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

I’ve been adding new videos to my YouTube Channel here. Most are about my painting process, shot in my studio.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Pitch Ring Around the Hole

This painting is for sale, so drop me a note at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. Click the image and it should enlarge in your browser.

This is an original acrylic painting on canvas, 18″ x 24″.  A Certificate of Authentication is included. Outside dimensions with the frame is about 25″ x 31″ The framed painting is $1300. Frame options are available. Shipping is a bit extra, but we have good crates ready to go. This frame is one influenced by the Taos School solid wood frames that I’ve been using recently. Really suits the painting and brings it back to the 1940’s.

This painting was influenced by the red-breasted nuthatch family that lives next to the studio, the most friendly bunch of birds I know. When I was building the design of this new painting, I remembered that they tend to bring fir resin to plaster a white ring around the nest cavity hole, ensuring no predictors can make it past the sticky gate. I did a video of my process, and also tell this story in my new YouTube Video, seen here with the others I’ve created. 

Here’s the original concept sketch. It shows the tree hole, parents gathered around tending to the ‘kids’. The design stayed pretty much the same to completion, which is often the case. What initially feels right to me, stays put in my mind. At this stage, I don’t think I remembered the pitch hole idea. That happened as the painting proceeded.

 

My models right outside our dining room window. Parents trying to teach the kids how to do it.

The story of birds using fir pitch on the nest entrance is well-known and even studied. I go into this in my video on my channel here.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

I’ve been adding new videos to my YouTube Channel here. Most are about my painting process, shot in my studio.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Similk Bay Beach Restoration Art

I’ve painted many pieces of art for the Northwest Straits Foundation. They’re the shoreline restoration folks in Bellingham, WA that coordinates the restoration funding with actually getting the job done. And, they often come to me for the final, interpretive panel that explains what they did.

This time it was for Similk Bay along the eastern side of Whidbey Island, just northeast of Deception Pass in Washington State. It’s a very shallow bay, full of critically important eelgrass, but at low tides you could actually drive on it – it was that shallow. And people did drive on it! For years they used a small launch ramp right here, running over the eelgrass with its crabs, young salmon, forage fish, all manner of fragile aquatic life. Then: why are the crabs gone? Where are the fish?

There were people disgruntled to loose their launch pad, but sometimes progress backward is good. Below was my five-minute concept sketch. I put it in the design program to see how it fit with some text. Pretty well, I thought.

Below is my refined sketch. You can see how it’s basically it’s the same drawing, but all the details are now worked out. It still changed a lot before the final color version. All of this, including the final painting, took less than a month.

And here it is in the design program. It fits pretty well. I wrote the text, as I often do, but it was altered many times as all good writing is a collaboration before it’s final publication.

And below is the site where this printed panel will live. Cars drove right down here past the driftwood to launch their boats. The final panel below.


Here’s a sample of the beach, part of my process is to take lots of reference photos. I needed this in the studio later to figure out how the beach and bay bottom might look.

And my house model. The old launch ramp is right next to the house. I really enjoy these projects because it allows me to place art where you’d never expect to find it – ON A BEACH SAVING AN ECOSYSTEM! My paintings end up on people’s walls, but they also end up in place like this.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com. 

And thanks, Lisa, at Northwest Straits Foundation for continuing to support this guy, one man with a brush.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Backpacking, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Ruddy Turnstones – Spring Migration

This painting is for sale, so drop me a note at larryeifert@gmail.com if you’re interested. Click the image and it should enlarge in your browser.

This is an original acrylic painting on canvas, 30″ x 40″.  $3600 framed. A Certificate of Authentication is included. Outside dimensions with the frame is about 36″ x 46″ and it’s not going to be framed in a cheapy frame, but one suitable for galleries. Frame options are available. We have a double-boxed professional box for this to ship with and shipping will be charged at cost.

I like to tell stories in my paintings. This one started that process when I walked out to the end of the local marina’s commercial dock and was greeted by almost 100 chattering little birds, turnstones, resting from days of migration. They fly at night for safety, rest and gossip during the day. But, I also saw them a year before on an April backpack around the Ozette Triangle Trail in Olympic National Park. I saw many sandpipers on the low-tide beach rocks just at dusk – just before they all took off in a whoosh and headed north. Sorting through photos, I ran across these trip photos and found this one, which became the rocks in the painting. It was all I needed to get the project going.

Here’s my little talk about making this painting.  It’s on my YouTube Channel along with several others.

My first-draft concept sketch. I put the grid lines in to help redraw it on the canvas.

And I’m currently putting this white-silver frame on it, but we have other styles available.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

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 paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

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 Published Story

My Monthly Story for 48 North Magazine

ArtistsViewOct14

Click on the image to enlarge it in your browser. There might be a test later about Murres.

Dang, too much stuff to post. With all these small acrylic paintings flying about, I’ve been forgetting to post my monthly page in 48 North magazine. This one was about Common Murres, and in fall I see these birds often when I’m sailing in Port Townsend Bay, and, as usual, I simply painted and wrote about what’s happening in my life. Bear with me – it may be a couple of months old, but still some fun writing and illustrations. These pages are  pencil and acrylic illustrations – fun and fast for me, and hopefully loose and tight at the same time.

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.

Uncategorized

Golden-crowned Kinglet – Huckleberries

 

Golden-crowned-Kinglet-and-Huckleberries

Not 20 feet out the studio window, Nancy’s blueberry leaves are showing some amazing fall bronze, green and yellow. So, then a little golden-crowned kinglet came along. This painting was just meant to be, I guess. Someone asked me how these small paintings feel to paint after miles of paint on big murals. To tell the truth, what I like is the simple fact they’re not commissions and I have to please someone other than myself. Other than that, it’s all the same, just the brush sizes are different, and maybe the fact that I use my fingers on these – and the back of my hand of the bigger stuff.

 

One of my last posts sold to a past client who bought it for her budding artist grand-daughter. I wrote a little card to go with it which gave me a chance to speak of what I actually liked about the painting, what to look for if I were her. It was fun to think about.

This one? Look at the cool feathers compared to the rest of it, but not ‘cool’ in the 60’s sense. The slight coolness of the bird should make it recede (cool colors generally recede in a painting), but they just blow out at you because the rest of it is so hot.

Golden-crnd-Kinglet-Huckleberries-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.

The custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Outside measurements are about 12″ x 15″ 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. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up for more posts. I’m trying to expand my list. An email  to me with their address will work.
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

Barnes Creek Trail – Shadows

Barnes-Creek-Trail---Shadows

Sorry, this one is sold.

Barnes Creek Trail – Shadows. This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed.
The 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. Also, I have several other frame styles if you so choose.
Email us for details.

Barnes-Creek-Trail-Shadows-framed

A little back story: A few weeks ago we hiked Barnes Creek Trail in Olympic National Park, the extension of the shorter Marymere Falls Trail. On the way back, we saw late afternoon sun streaming across the creek and lighting up this area – like a spotlight. I thought, “Oh, a painting.” About a zillion tourists take that shorter trail to the falls. “Make it?”, asked one more-than-hefty person in the parking lot when we came out. But forget that waterfall-stuff on the kid’s trail, if you go past the tourist trail sign to the falls, Barnes Creek Trail goes upslope for some miles, an almost forgotten bit of lovely. In a bit the trail passes over a ridge and then drops to a really wonderful bridge that I just have to show you. It’s built of two trees, downed just perfectly to span the 200′ across the water. Nice job – Park Service!

Barnes-Ck-bridge

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

Admiralty Inlet Natural Area Preserve – Forest Wildlife mural

Forest-Wildlife

Click the image and it will enlarge in your browser.

Feeling pretty good about this painting, and that’s saying something for me (who’s usually a real curmudgeon about my own stuff). With several more paintings right behind this one, I didn’t hesitate to finish it up this week. Some details need to be refined, a couple of  minor changes I can already see, but we’re close – very close.

This is all about wildlife in the forest, so I designed it to show the actual trail meandering down and around the viewer. It’s as if YOU were back in the woods with all the critters, watching hikers come and go, come and go. The coyote shares the trail with people as I often see them doing (they can cover a lot of ground that way), a Douglas squirrel shucks a Douglas-fir cone, a chickadee lands on an old uprooted snag. I enjoy piecing this together, one critter at a time, and hopefully in the end it all makes sense. The critters should all be sized relative to each other, spaced in such ways that might really be true. I still need to alter the rose color, fix the shine on the squirrel, a couple of other things – and, well, what do you know, just this moment I realized I forgot the deer mouse in the old stump. Back to the easel! Next time you see this painting, look for it.

And here’s the sketch again, finished just 13 days ago. I’m telling you, I’m on fire! Can you see the deer mouse?

Forest-animals-sketch

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.