Tag Archives: forage fish

New Painting Post, Sailing, Washington State Parks, Waysides, Wildlife

Sucia Island Marine Food Webs

There are 16 paintings here, all in layers!

This is my second effort for two wayside panels at Sucia Island in the San Juan Islands. See the other one here. This one is much more complex, many pieces of art all layered together to tell the story of forage fish, salmon and orca whales.

Here is the initial concept.

And here is the seventh version.

And below are the individual little paintings used to make this final composite.

Many Friends groups often use my final art for other uses. We put the art on posters, jigsaw puzzles, framed art they can use for fund-raising. Sorry to say, but obviously that can’t be the case with this one – but I thought the orca and salmon paintings were worthy of being stand-alone art.

I know lots of Northwest boaters read this blog since I also write a monthly page for 48 North, the Puget Sound boating magazine. Next time you’re anchored off Sucia Island, search out these two installations. They’ll be living their lives sitting beside Mud Bay. I will, too.

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.

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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

Dugualla Bay Preserve

Last week I posted the other wayside panel for Dugualla Bay Preserve. This second one shows the dike removed to allow saltwater to refill the old shoreline and provide forage fish and salmon new habitat. The photo below is the ‘cut’ and then below that my reference photos to the crab and mussel habitat, newly formed tidelands full of life.

We found many little crabs in these holes, all snuggled up and giving us the stink-eye.

And below in the main channel, the NEW channel created by breaching the dike, a major mussel bed teaming with life had developed. As soon as I saw this area, I realized THIS was the story for the art – new places for life where there weren’t just a year before.


Here’s the process of developing this panel. I started with a really rough concept sketch, a few blocks with ‘x’s showing where the text overlay might go. It was fairly close to the final design, right out of the box. From this rough draft, you can see the process.

And the final art featured the mussel beds, crab caves and broken dike. A good story.

Thanks to many groups and individuals, I’ve had the wonderful adventure of doing dozens of these Pacific Northwest salmon and orca recovery panels over the past couple of years. Always challenging, always different, it’s been great fun to take a muddy shoreline or messed up culvert and make some art about it. Stay tuned, there’s more on the horizon – a LOT more.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

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 paintings