Tag Archives: Larry Eifert

New Painting Post, Wildlife

Owls in The Alder

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. We have a double-boxed professional box for this to ship in, and it has moulded styroform forms inside for protection.

This painting is about the barred owls that have moved into our little patch of forest. We used to have great-horned owls, saw-whet and western screech owls, but these interlopers have run them off. I’m not sure where the nest is, but it’s close, and we occasionally have these guys on our tray feeder, or attacking our windows when they see their reflections. They can’t seem to get along with anyone, even themselves.

Here’s the presketch I did for the design. You can see my idea of lining up the heads in the upper center-of-interest area, then bringing the alder trunk down into the foreground.

This is a very old alder and it’s right outside the window, so my model is close. I very picturesque tree, don’t you think?

I put together my usual video talking about the painting on YouTube, which is here on my channel. If you want to listen to me yack about this painting, just click:

And below is a previous version. Close – I didn’t feel it was quite right yet. I’ll  leave  it to you to figure out what’s changed.

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 Painting Post, Wildlife

Cloud of Chickadees

This painting has sold. It’s still good reading and the video is a hoot.

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, but I’m not broadcasting the price so I can show this on Youtube and Facebook. Frame options are available, and I’ll ship it in a double-boxed crate.

Below is a short video with me talking about this painting and the process.

This painting is an appreciation to a chestnut-backed chickadee family that has kept us company here for many years. They’re not the same birds, of course, but each year a few new ones appear, the ‘cast’ evolves – but it’s still about a half a dozen that hang together as one flock. They spend their time poking around for seeds and bugs, staying together for safety, but each morning after I fill the tray feeder they’re on it instantly, dodging squirrels and the bigger varied thrushes. This painting is sort of a snapshot, a moment in time as I saw it in February, with early miner’s lettuce leaves just beginning to come up through last fall’s alder and cherry leaves.

Here’s the log model I worked from.

Below are some enlargements of the painting, mainly for phone viewing.

 

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.

Commissioned paintings, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks

Using Art for Historic Fort Flagler

On top of everything else, I somehow fit these two paintings into 2022, a  year of many paintings. This park, Fort Flagler State Park, is on Washington’s Marrowstone Island, only 4 air-miles from our place near Port Townsend. It’s so close, how could I say no to learn more about my ‘hood’?

It’s a place that has relics from WW1, WW2, and many other improvements that have come along during the years – including after it became a state park. Sorting all that out was monumental, but thanks to Kelsey at State Parks, we figured out what to paint and what to leave out.  The above painting is about the fort and Admiralty Inlet, the waterway the fort is guarding.

The panel below is the same fort, but the housing area during WW2, an amazing ‘town’ of high-end barracks and homes, the power plant, stores and social buildings, parade grounds, the hospital and all the rest that was required when this was basically wilderness. No driving over to  the Food Co-op for kale, but the fort had huge gardens and probably acres of greens. I left out the Chinese laundry that was on the beach – imagine, all the wash was done using hot salt water!

Besides maps, I used my own site photos to figure all this out. I pieced it together, one building at a time, one street after the other. It wasn’t easy, but that’s why this stuff is still fun for me. I DID grow up in a museum. It’s in my blood.

Oh, and thanks to Sam W at state parks who keeps giving me these fun projects, who was also a great help dodging the gun-guys and their overly picky changes.

Above are my sketches with changes the historians came up with.  It’s just part of the process: I toss it out there as best I can, they all mutter and say “nice try, but”. As you can see, these finished panels are now installed and have become another part of the history of this place. It’s not just some of the best beaches and forest trails, but a really historic landscape.

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.

Murals, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

I’m free: 540 days of Everglades paintings

I started this project June 29th, 2021. That’s 542 days start to finish. It took that long to complete 24 paintings for Everglades National Park, but the painting part only took a fraction of that! Meetings, waiting, more meetings. So, here’s the last one, 108″ x 48″ that will be installed along along the Anhinga Trail Boardwalk in the Royal Palms area. It’ll  have text tastefully spread across it, two languages both English and Spanish. All these photos should enlarge in your browser.

  • No, these paintings are not the only stuff I’ve painted in 542 days.
  • Yes, I also painted dozens of other images for state parks, national parks, a bunch of salmon recovery groups.
  • Yes, these will all be reproduced in aluminum with steel frames around them.
  • Yes, it’s not only me doing this, as I’m part of a team from EDX in Seattle and they are doing many more wayside panels than just mine.
  • One trip there was with EDX. A second trip was just Nancy and I this last spring to pick up more material I needed.

There is already another painting here, one that’s 30 years old, so my new painting will be replacing it. What’s the difference, besides age? Times change. Today, the alien snakes, pythons and Anacondas people have released into the Everglades have killed off many of the species that were in that old painting! Pretty much gone are the raccoons and otters, the ecosystem is changing. So, I’m just upgrading this to the current and future world.


And here’s the scene from the boardwalk. I think I got it fairly well.

And sitting on the railing throughout my first recon photo session, this immature cormorant just sat there as he got his clothes straightened out. I could walk right up to him.

And of course, this guy was hanging out under the pilings.  The Anhinga Trail is truly one of the best places in Everglades National Park to see wildlife, almost guaranteed.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Early Paintings, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Everglades National Park – Plentiful Fish wayside

I’m now finishing up all 24 paintings for Everglades National Park. I went there twice in the past 2 years to get it all straight in my head, and now the final paintings are coming together. Here’s number 19, a story about fish. Putting art with words, I’ve become better at it, but it’s still much more difficult than when I just painted landscapes.

I have a little note on my website (larryeifert.com)  that asks to see old paintings if you have them.  I get some interesting submissions, and this one just arrived from John Van Spyk who said he inherited this. Dated 1989, it’s now 33 years old. I painted hundreds of these small landscapes back then, taking my painting kit out along roadsides and going to work. I could do several of these a day and sold them in the Eifert Gallery in the little town of Ferndale. Here’s another one I recently received from Judy Salter. Both of these are watercolors, and I think they’ve stood the text of time pretty well.

But now I’m into much more complicated efforts – and still enjoy it. Here’s the evolution of the fish painting: the original concept sketch, then the beginning of the colored chapter, and finally again the final. It didn’t change all that much, did it?

Location photos for the painting during a Florida rainly day. There’s Sherry, part of the design and production team.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Everett Washington, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

City of Everett WA Madison Morgan Park

ALL THESE ENLARGE WITH A CLICK

I’ve been painting some outdoor wayside panels for the City of Everett, Washington. This is my 3rd and 4th for Everett, which is north of Seattle and is becoming a real city with some real money to spend on this stuff. But it’s also becoming a ‘real city’, with its nature gone. They have a small nature park in the middle of it and so I’m working on some installations that tell about its nature. Lots of shrub plantings are going on here, putting the place back to some assembly of a native forest.

This is the original concept sketch and you can see how the design really stayed the same as the painting progressed. The boundaries for me were not hemmed in at all, they were just pleased I was doing it.

This panel is sort of a nature guide, birds on the top and animals on the bottom. It was a fun image for me to figure out, as these are all the same critters as we have here in our own little forest just 40 miles to the west on the Olympic Peninsula. And I’ll say this, we have better by far, right here in our own meadow. That makes these paintings show how fortunate Nancy and I are to have these acres of trees and critters that feel safe here. We even have old snags that serve as homes for many.

This is the original finished painting before it went into the design. It takes a variety of skills to make these, design, writing, making art and a deep background of the nature. Somehow it all has to come together to make a dramatic and beautiful piece of art that, hopefully, lots of people will stop and learn something. A bit of art in the forest.

And this is the corner of Madison-Morgan Naturescape Park where these two panels are going. The second wayside is being painted now and is coming soon, so stay tuned. Then between 15 and 20 more are going around Silver Lake in Everett, another urban nature park being spruced up by my stuff. In total, I should have about 24 paintings on panels here that will all last beyond my life – it’s a good legacy.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, National Park Service, People Paintings, Wildlife

Installation Photos San Juan Island murals

Panorama of my 35′ x 17′ tribal wall. Possibly the biggest painting in the Pacific Northwest about prehistoric Indian life before European contact.

While the furniture and other exhibits aren’t installed yet by the good folks at Capitol Museum Services from Manassas, VA, I received these photos from the Park Superintendent, Elexis Fredy, and they’re good enough to pass around. This is at American Camp, San Juan Island National Historical Park in Washington State. Thanks, Lexi, for sending these. I thought I’d show them here because I rarely get to show actual installation shots of the process. I paint this stuff, go home and start the next one.  I know, you’ve seen these paintings before on my blog, but not in the actual space they were designed for. The back wall is 35 feet across, 17 feet high, the prairie mural is 7 feet across. My part of this is finished, and I’m currently working through 35 new paintings for other parks.

This secondary mural is 7 feet wide and shows today’s prairie, which is most of American Camp’s landscape. It will have a reader rail with an additional 5 paintings of mine along the bottom.  

I painted my first visitor center exhibit 60 years ago! Not a typo. It wasn’t exactly good, but it was my start, and later I figured I’d not improve much if I went to art school and learned to paint like everyone else – so instead, I just got to work. It’s been a long and most interesting path, to put it mildly. It used to be that I’d travel to the site, get a room to live in or camp, and start painting. Sometimes it’d take weeks, a couple of projects took more than a month. The food was generally awful, and it wasn’t easy, living out of a suitcase. One, a huge project in the Denver International Airport, meant I had to clear security each day, have ALL the materials xrayed, get crazy badges and walk to work going beneath 747’s that had just landed from Germany.

Today, this has all evolved to a much more civilized process. I get to paint in my studio at a smaller size, send a digital file that is then printed on vinyl and actually looks better than the original. The installation in this new building will show off my stuff for many decades, probably upwards of a half a century and be seen by people long after I’m gone. If the place burns to the ground thanks to domestic terrorists, they’ll just put up a new version in the new building (hear that, Bundy Clan). If someone throws acid on it, they can just change out a panel instead of the entire wall.

And here’s the installation crew getting things ready. Better them than me, I’ll say that without hesitation.

A little back story on the art. In 2020, I was commissioned by EDX Exhibits in Seattle to design this wall, and the only real guidelines given were that it should show the real location at South Beach on San Juan Island. I lived on my boat in the 80’s near here, so I already knew the place – and that was of great help). I set the scene of a summer tribal salmon camp, where for centuries families would come to fish and dry salmon – and pick and process camas bulbs that were the two main staples of their diet. It’s a pre-contact scene without iron or steel tools, so it might be any moment in time between 8,000 years ago to about 1700 A.D.

How Did The Process Start?

It was great fun for me to research this, and I’m thankful they gave me almost complete freedom to do what I wanted. It took dozens of site photos, Google Earth views and every Edward Curtis photo I could find to do this. The web has many helpful photos, but some were completely unreliable. The park and tribes checked accuracies of hundreds of details, but not the overall design of people working and meeting on the prairie where the park is today. For example, they had Wool Dogs, a now-extinct breed of canine that were both pets, babysitters and wool sources they trimmed clothing with. There are several in the painting.

The visitor center will open at the end of June 2022 – come out and see it.

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 Painting Post, New Published Story, Published painting, Sailing, Wildlife

#118 – My Last 48 North story

When it’s time to paint something else!

I sail around in my little boat (whichever one I have currently – there have been 6 – 6 break-out-another-thousand stands for ‘boat’). It’s a floating studio, and learn about what I’m seeing. I’ve done this for decades, but since 2012, I’ve made one-page art stories of these little journeys for 48 North magazine in Seattle, 118 stories total, once a month without fail.

Anemones, whales, worms, birds, urchins, clams, salmon, it’s all been fair game, researched and painted. Time to do another issue? I just go for a sail and there would always be next month’s story.

This month, I wrote about this guy, a hermit crab – a crab that borrows other shells to live in. Here were the drawings I did to get it started.

Then it turned into this refined page, and I wrote some text to go with it.

This one will be my last. Time to go in another direction, don’t you think? I mean, really, 118!! And some artist’s claim they need, what, motivation or inspiration to get started?

For me, it all started with this issue in 2012. At the time, I had been writing similar stories, but much longer, for 48 North but also the Seattle Times, using my art with the words. It was in that order, write it, then paint it. These sketchbook journals were the opposite. I did the art first.

July 2012-The the  first  issue.

This was a colaboration with Nancy. Her photo, my drawings and words. Our boat!

And at the same time, I made a few covers for them. This one of our boat of the left, 1939 Sea Witch, and the otters that were living there as well. We had geraniums on the dock in summer. Locals will probably recognize those other boats, three historic woodies living together. The guy on the right makes high-end violin bows, the black hulled boat belonged to an architect, and us – painters of nature.

So, all these stories can be found here, or almost all 118 of them, on my website.

It’s been fun, but time to move into other types of paintings and writing. Time to explore other ideas and continue on with these huge National Park Service projects – and, boy, are they piled up awaiting.

More soon. Stay tuned. Feel free to pass this around. People seem to enjoy seeing my process.

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.

Commissioned paintings, National Park Service, New Painting Post, People Paintings

Wrapping Up My American Camp mural

This photo was sent by Margy Emerson of her sister next to the installation.

Getting close to the final brushstroke on this 35-foot wall for the San Juan National Historical Park visitor center mural. How does a painter know when it’s the final brush stroke? When he can’t stand to make another one! (or so the old saying goes.) This wall was probably more brush strokes that I would have liked, but the entire process was interesting, challenging and really fun. I can’t help but feel grateful for the opportunity.

Here are some section shots that should enlarge in your browser so you can see it better. I think there are around 105 Indians, 18 gulls, 3 eagles and 2 wool dogs. Those wool dogs are an extinct species of dogs tribal weavers would use for wool, and I have one of them spinning with a drop spindle.

The scene is at South Beach, San Juan Island, Washington, a place that is now a national historic park. Historically, It’s a park because of the Pig War in 1859 between the U.S. and Britain. In reality, the “history” is more about the giant salmon runs in late summer, when millions of fish coming down the Strait of Juan de Fuca would crowd the shoreline. For thousands of years, many different tribes would show up here to catch and dry a few of these fish, and also dig camas bulbs, and catch up on the news. Both the salmon and camas flour were important winter foods.

The painting is supposed to show pre-European contact, so no iron, steel, or woven cotton fabric. It was fun to research all this, but it’s also why I enjoy making art so much for the National Park Service. We both feel art is a good way to show our legacy, our history and future (see the current generation and future generation down in the right corner). The NPS seriously pushes me to paint beyond what I’ve ever thought I’d paint. This project made me realize how grateful I am for taking physics and algebra in high school!

Here’s a photo of my studio with part of this being painted. See those reference photos down along the bottom? Nancy was my model for almost every one of the people.

Below is the visitor center wall this is going on. It’ll be installed by early summer if we’re all lucky, along with another 11 paintings from me, and all the other exhibits. Capitol Museum Services from Manassas Virginia is doing the installation.

The outside of the new visitor center with Nancy in front and a truly amazing Douglas-fir that they basically built the building around. Most commercial projects would have just bulldozed the tree, cleared the land and then planted little Mall-Ready trees, but not the NPS!

And the last two photos are the location of the painting a quarter mile from the visitor center. It’s actually a couple of square miles of landscape all pushed together into one painting, add people, voila!

When I was growing up, the kid of two people who worked for the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Illinois, I would go down to the museum after school. My babysitters were the curators who were building giant habitat exhibits much like this new wall mural. Most of the exhibits were about nature, but a couple were of Indian life. Robert Larson, a famed painter in charge of this (and a big man who didn’t need a ladder to paint the sky) would talk to me as he worked about what he was doing. I was always a little kid with his mouth open in awe. That was 60 years ago! I know Bob would have enjoyed this, wanted to be a part of it. His kindness and friendship, along with all the rest of those wonderful people in the museum’s back end, are still a factor in my life.

Here’s a photo of Larson doing a plaque of my mom after her death. It’s in the Virginia Eifert Book Store in the museum. And below, one of his big Indian paintings at the museum.

Robert Larson paints the Archaic diorama in the ÒPeoples of the PastÓ exhibit. Photo courtesy Illinois State Museum

More soon. Stay tuned. Feel free to pass this around. People seem to enjoy seeing my process.

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.

Commissioned paintings, National Park Service, People Paintings

American Camp mural progress report

One man with a brush! One brush stroke at a time! (these blow up in your browser to see details)

Personally, I think there must be an easier way to pass the time in my 70’s, but here I am none-the-less – cranking away on a super-complex wall mural in my studio.  I’d  have to say this project sure is fun and a real challenge, and keeps my brain about as sharp as it can be.  I’m just glad I took physics and higher math in high school.

This is being painted half-size for a 35′-wide x 17′ tall wall in the new visitor center at the San Juan Island National Historical Park near Friday Harbor, Washington. Same project, I  finished the first one, a big prairie ecosystem painting. This is a bigger thing by far. This is the entire side wall of the building, and has all sorts of stuff complicating things, wall plugs, fire alarms, a door, a reader rail with tribal artifacts – makes me dizzy just trying to work it out.

What’s Going On?

This scene shows the summer gathering on the prairies at South Beach and Salmon Banks in the San Juan Islands, where many tribes would gather in late summer to fish and dry salmon, dig and roast camas bulbs and lay in winter stores.  The buildings were temporary. This went on for thousands of years and so the painting is set in a pre-iron, pre colonization time, maybe 500 years ago. So far, Nancy has been the model for almost all the people. I think there are about 30 of them. Some facial features I found online in the Curtis photo library, some I took from modern tribal gathering photos but just slimmed everyone down. This was also pre-refined sugar and wheat times.

So how is this installed?

I’ll do the sky as a separate painting using a car paint sprayer, scan and photograph all of it, piece it together into on giant digital file. Then Capitol Museum Services in Manassas, Virginia will put it on vinyl and up it goes (thankfully, I don’t have to do that part).  I’m just the guy with the paintbrush.

More soon. Stay tuned. Feel free to pass this around. People seem to like seeing my process.

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.