Tag Archives: Interpretive Panels

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Dugualla Flats Preserve

Just finishing up two new paintings for outdoor wayside exhibits at Whitbey Island’s Dugualla Bay Preserve.  This is another project for the Whidbey Camano Island Land Trust and, as always, it was a pleasure to paint for them.

This recently restored wetland is on both sides of a dike road a few miles north of Oak Bay. One side is fresh water, the other is a salt marsh salmon habitat area. First it was bay, then farmland with nature shut out. Now it’s back to nature. The bay side is very good forage fish and salmon habitat.

This first painting is the freshwater side, a rich habitat of cattails and critters from western toads to trumpeter swan – and I can’t say I’ve ever painted THOSE two in one painting before! The wetlands have water levels that rise and fall with the seasons and on a site visit a few months ago I took some reference shots, not very good as you can see, but somehow I built an interesting painting with what I had.

I started with a quick gesture drawing, a concept sketch showing cattails on the right, map and text on the left, maybe wildlife in the center. It’s sort of amazing to me that the final painting was very close to this.

Then a more refined drawing came with a better understanding how the wildlife fits in, getting their sizes and spatial separations set for a good piece of art. The toad couldn’t be down with the rest of them in the marsh since they’re up in the drier meadows, so I just floated it in midair – a toady blimp.

And this is how the final painting looks. Click on it to enlarge in your browser. These things are certainly not just a nice painting like my days of gallery painting. It takes a bunch of planning to get the other components to all fit.

It all came together with the text, a map I did in Illustrator using the National Park Service’s map software – and the text the Land Trust supplied me. Very skilled efforts go into doing text for these panels and these are really well written. Too many words it becomes a ‘book on a stick’ and no one reads it. Too few words and no one learns anything. And this type of art is all about learning something – which I hope you did with this blog. I hope you liked it.

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

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Waysides, Wildlife

Dismal Nitch – Chinook Salmon Story

I like this Chinook salmon painting but it’s going to change, so I thought I’d post it here so at least there’s a memory of it. What’s wrong with it, you ask, well, the National Park Service says it’s not fat enough! Welcome to MY life, and I guess I’d agree. They have some compelling reasons – so, back to the easel.


Here’s the entire fish. The final painting will go on one of seven waysides stands at the Dismal Nitch area beside the Columbia Estuary, part of Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. This is where ‘The Corps’, in 1804, spent a week hunkered down, starving, wet and miserable before a group of Chinook Indians paddled by and sold them some salmon. It’s a good story, and one I knew from my childhood when Virginia wrote a book about the wildlife and flora this bunch found and named, not to mention the Lewis River, Clark’s Fork and others. Now, here I am 50 years later painting exhibit art for the same place! The apples didn’t fall far from her tree, did they?

This painting of spawning salmon is one of over a dozen I’ve painted in the past couple of years, most for salmon restoration areas around the Salish Sea where I live. I’ve gotten much better at understanding these amazing fish and what they look like, how they live and suffer in their final days in fresh water. They feed us, they feed the riverside forest trees and all the creatures that live next to salmon streams. They’re not a gift to be taken lightly.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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 here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Lime Kiln Point – Orca Wayside Art in the San Juan Islands

This painting is one of four for Lime Kiln State Park, west side of San Juan Island and Friday Harbor. If you want to see whales in the Northwest without getting on a boat, this is the place. Well, technically, you have to get on a ferry to get to the island, but you get the point. On a summer day, there can be hundreds of people lined up here on the cliff to watch the killer whale show right in front of them – and soon they’ll also be immersed in my paintings as well. 

After adding the text to the panel, words and art go together fairly well on this one. Two panels are in the six-foot range, but this one is half that. The others are coming soon and I’ll try to post them as we go along.

I lived six summers in Friday Harbor when my first bigger boat, 40′ sloop “October” was here – and I had my gallery in Ferndale, Ca. This was in the 80’s, and I learned to paint the Northwest here. I’d go out to Lime Kiln Point and watch these big guys come right up to shore. Later, when Nancy and I lived on our 45′ Monk “Rumpy”, we’d come up from Port Townsend and lucky timing once put us here when an entire pod was too. We stopped the boat, turned off the engine and watched, shocked, as the entire family casually swam under us. The big male was bigger than the boat, or so it seemed. No one touched, we were thrilled, dry mouths and all. And now my art goes on shore. Paint hard, live long and connections like this happen all the time. I’m constantly thrilled at this life-long deep connection to nature. Not much matters more except the lovely person I share this with!

Thanks for reading my stuff 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.

Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Waysides, Wildlife

A New Puzzle for the North Olympic Salmon Coalition

A new puzzle arrived for our local salmon restoration group and we high-jacked a few of them for us. I guess you could call it a ‘Limited Edition’. This non-profit puts restoration projects together with partners with funds to help Olympic Peninsula watersheds, and they’re just about the best bunch of folks we know around here.

Last year I did some art and designs for a series of wayside panels that completed a major habitat restoration in the estuary of Discovery Bay on the Olympic Peninsula (that’s the bay in the background of the puzzle). They decided that a jigsaw puzzle might be a perfect way to spread the word about this and raise some money. Very progressive attitude, and a perfect way to showcase some of this art.  I did the design, and below is the box back – learn about salmon and restoration, all in one.

Here’s the box front. I used three paintings, melded them together and I think it’s a fairly difficult puzzle. 

And below is one of the paintings installed. Thousands of salmon migration barriers are on streams and rivers in the Northwest. This project opened up two streams and help these fish return to spawn a next generation.  NOSC removed 1900 tons of rock, 425 tons of contaminated soils,  added 3200 feet of a community waterline and lots more. It was a big project – and I was proud to be a small part of it by providing some interpretive art. We also handled the fabrication and printing, all in a day’s work for me.

If you’d like a puzzle, you can order it here on our website. Or, call Nicole O’Hara at NOSC, (360) 379-8051 and get one as a donation to this great group. Then, if you’re local, get out here and have a look at all this.

Thanks for reading my stuff 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.

Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

The Salish Sea – a New Jigsaw Puzzle

A new puzzle arrived  yesterday, called The Salish Sea. This is a section of a painting I did for the Whidbey Island Land Trust and shows the rather amazing underwater (and normally unseen by us) ecosystem just offshore between Port Townsend and Coupeville, Washington. There are a LOT of critters stuffed in this painting and it should make for a good puzzle. Below is the box back, as interpretive as I could get it. The puzzle is 24″ x 18″ and has 500 pieces. 

This place, a stark and diverse shoreline, gets the full brunt of storms and waves coming right down the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It’s part of the Admiralty Inlet Natural Area and has a harsh vibrancy about it that I just love. It was fun to paint.

People send us these photos from time to time.

All these images enlarge in your browser if you click them.

You can order from our online store here: or by emailing us if you want to send a check here: larry@larryeifert.com.

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

Orcas Ferry Dock art – A Rich and Vibrant Home

This is only the first draft of the layout, but the painting is almost there. The San Juan Islands, full of life. A bit of tightening up, fiddling about and sweeping the corners – the usual stuff and it’s ready to go. I tried to make the viewer sense the relative bland wildlife offering above the water’s surface – and compare it with the lush and complex nature below the ocean’s surface, a place teaming with life. Lots of words to paint around, but I still think it tells the story pretty well with the painting.

And here’s the draft sketch from a few months ago. This text was written by the San Juan Islands Marine Resources Committee and commissioned by San Juan County. It’s part of the bigger project I’m working on for the Orcas Landing Ferry Dock. More on this soon as it progresses.

Not many posts are coming from me this summer. It’s not that I’ve been out hiking (I have), it’s that I’ve just finished 17 (yes, seventeen) paintings!! for a park in Georgia. Here’s a sample. Not your normal Eifert effort of focusing on nature, agree? I’ll post all of these as soon as they’re put together.

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.

Murals, Waysides, Wildlife

Orcas Landing – Wayside Art at the Ferry Landing

More paintings! Last year we spent some time in the San Juan Islands doing a site visit for this old hangout, the Orcas Island Ferry Landing. Lots of history here for me as I lived aboard my boat in Friday Harbor in the 80’s. I know every anchorage and headland, and spent the night several times tied to the old wooden dock that was once here (sloppy chop from boats in the channel). Now it’s steel and concrete, the old fuel tanks on shore are gone – and soon some Eifert art will be installed here for the next generation to ponder this place, rich with nature and history. ‘Orcas Landing’ is the concrete overlook in the photo’s center.

Here’s the design for the overlook, a series of my paintings along the railing. Visitors look over the rail and directly at the ferry landing.  

This one is the final panel, all approved by San Juan County and awaiting installation. 

And this image is a similar shoreline installation I did for the City of Anacortes, a rich ecosystem here, too, with eel grass meadows and rocky shorelines. This will be the 12th public piece of art about Salish Sea ecosystems. It seems to be a trend.

Stay tuned. There are many more paintings coming for this beautiful place. After spending much of my life here in the 80’s, I’m proud to be contributing to it.

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.

Murals, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Snow Creek Wayside Panel Installed

I think I probably posted this painting as it was happening a few months ago, but a couple of weeks ago, the good folks with the North Olympic Salmon Coalition finally installed the last panel in this project. This one tells the story of restoring Snow Creek as it meanders down into Discovery Bay,  just a few miles from our studio, and how this valley is on the way to becoming a healthy stream for salmon. Lots of money, lots of time and people power, and a very beautiful place.

Here’s the best part for me: this is right beside Highway 20, the main road from our home to Olympic National Park and the big box town of Sequim. We leave home, drive over the pass beside Discovery Bay, down this hill and there this is, just waiting for me to hate it. (I hate all of them, no big deal). So, I get to drive right by my own stuff on the way to enjoying the pizza bite samples at Costco. What a kick!

In case you want to see how it looks without the frame, here’s the final fabricated panel on aluminum by Gopher in Minnesota. Great job – the best in the country.

Snow Creek Restoration, NOSC

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.

Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center Installation Complete

A two-year project finally gets across the finish line for Olympic National Park. Not the easiest thing to capture, but Nancy did a pretty good job of it photographing the final installation. A four-sided room with old-growth canopy, four other paintings on a tabletop with intricate details like swimming salmon, an otter, a fantasy image of Mount Olympus. There are hidden critters, pileated woodpeckers, spotted owls, snails, slugs, snakes, salamanders and more. There were times I truly wondered how this was all coming together, but it did – and I think it works pretty well.

Below, here’s a progress shot of some of the wall paintings (the original art) laid out in the old Superintendent’s house at Olympic NP.

And below: this part was too big to see all in one piece in the studio, so we tacked it up outside the barn occasionally to see how it was working. Nancy painted lots of the trees.

Installation with the guys from Virginia, Rob from Color-ad and Mike who did the 3-d stuff. I think we felt like family by the time with was finished.

Highly interactive tabletop was a pain to figure out, Often we all just made it up.

This is now installed and open for viewing at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center on the west side of Olympic National Park. The first new exhibits since construction of the building in 1968, I was first here in about 1978 for a backpack up the valley. That entry into the Hoh had a profound effect on me and it’s probably a big reason I have now spent my last two decades in Port Townsend – on the othe side of the peninsula. It’s a rare and spiritual place for both Nancy and I –  and now I feel we’re a part of it.

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, 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.