Tag Archives: Larry Eifert

Backpacking, Hiking, Nancy Cherry Eifert, New Painting Post

Sheltering in Place, a Painting Campout

Down through the ’33’, a piece of forest that’s like a park. The name came from how much it cost.

Nancy and I are truly fortunate to have our own bit of nature here that’s big enough to actually camp in. Through the years, we’ve added to it, strategically bought chunks here and there, and now it’s a very tasty place to walk. So, since we’re supposed to stay home, how about a little backpack with Nancy as the supporting photographer and me as painter!

This patch of trilliums come up each spring, getting bigger each time and is at the start of a little loop that is really a complex bunch of deer trails. I have some new equipment, so, out we went with that new Six Moon Designs pack on to try out their new tent, a Lunar Duo. If I can’t do it up a mountain somewhere, I can try it out here.

Along the way, I tried to get a couple of small paintings going, just jestures  of how it felt here on a warm spring day in a forest I know better than any.  This huge big-leaf maple is a favorite of mine, a giant sprawling mass of life that changes each year as branches fall off in winter storms. A couple of years ago, a fawn was born here.

A little way down the deer trail this little scene unfolds. I made the trail a bit wider in the painting, hopefully the deer won’t notice.
My new Lunar Duo tent from 6 Moon Designs – a perfect tent for an old guy.

Here’s a little tent review for the Lunar Duo, a perfect ultralight two-person tent:

This tent is already a hit with me. Less than half the weight of my old standby, yet much bigger in size. For decades I’ve carried a free-standing tent, one with enough complicated poles that you wouldn’t want to put it together in the dark. The Lunar Duo comes in at 2.5lbs and uses one carbon fiber pole and my hiking stick, that’s it. (my old tent was about 6lbs. and had about 30 little poles all stuck together with bungies)

I’ve read this one takes some fiddling and adjusting to put it up, and requires ground soft enough for the titanium stakes, but that’s the same as the other one – I never camp on rocks and still had to connect it to the ground. With a floating floor, this was up in minutes and I was set for the night. The floating floor means it just floats around under you like a little water tight boat under a waterproof cover.

Thanks for reading this week. Stay well out there so you can join me in the next addition of this little journey. Art and nature, they go together well, even if you’re still at home.

All photos by Nancy Cherry Eifert using the old Nikon backpacking camera without post processing.

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

Hiking in my Head – And Painting It

3rd Beach South End

A couple of new watercolors to help me, and maybe you, too. Frustrating times, aren’t they, but the point here is that I’m doing some remembering that these beautiful places are still there, still lovely and only a few miles away. They’ll be there when we return to whatever is the new normal after this pandemic. In the meantime, I’m hunkered down, waiting for time to pass so Nancy and I can get out there and hike beaches that make me understand what’s really important. These places will be here, even if we’re not, and even long after I’m gone. For me, it’s a measure of comfort to remember this.

Shore Crab

As I get older, I seem to be regaining an understanding that this stuff really means a lot to me. Don’t get me wrong, it always has, it’s just that I realize I can still get out there and I damned well should. And making a little bit of art of my experiences makes me enjoy it twice. One experience when I was there, and a second time when I make a little painting about it. The painting can come from a location sketch, or a photo, but the main thing is that painting gets me to actually LOOK at the place, to see how the beach curves around the shore, how the colors reflect in the water, how the sunset brightens it all up to a warm orange instead of just blue and green.

Ruby Beach, extreme low tide

I also don’t think these need to be full-blown paintings you might frame and hang. Just putting it here on my website and blog means more eyeballs will see these than if they were framed and sold to a private buyer. It’s almost public art here – and I sure know a thing or two about that, don’t I, and here’s the difference: public art means committees – and these paintings were created by a committee of one. Me.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week. Stay well out there so you can join me in the next addition of this little journey.

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, New Published Story, Washington State Parks

Jr Rangers Art at Deception Pass

The Junior Ranger program is nationwide and in most National Parks. I’ve contributed to a few in the past, providing art for the activity books. If you don’t know, it works like this: your kiddo asks at the visitor center for the book, they fill out the fun pages of puzzles and questions, many requiring getting out in the park – then get the Junior Ranger badge when you turn it back in before you leave. It’s a big deal, with millions of kids involved. Now, a few of the bigger state parks are getting into the action, and I just finished some art for Deception Pass State Park here in Puget Sound. Here’s a link to the national program. https://www.nps.gov/kids/parks-with-junior-ranger-programs.htm

Deception Pass has many habitats, beach, dunes, old-growth forest, cliffs and freshwater lakes.
This page is about soil and the bacteria and fungi that live in it.
Cliffs near the bay have distinctive plants, like this gumweed.
Oystercatcher, orchre stars, clams and crabs are around the rocky tidepools.
Sandy dunes are shown here, with the San Juan Islands offshore.

This is the sixth project I’ve done for this park, a small place packed with beauty. It’s suffering from too many people and too much noise from Navy jets training right over the park, but I still like to make art about these places. It helps me connect to them. Good nature doesn’t always have to be wilderness.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

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

Backpacks and Art

Catchy happy dance! That’s because of this new yellow device clamped to me – filled with paint brushes and watercolor paper. My new gear from Six Moon Designs arrived and I’m beginning to try some of it out. (top photo of the Elwha River last week with winter water.)

For 2020 I’m being sponsored by Six Moon Designs in Oregon, a family company that makes award-winning ultralight camping equipment. Here’s the pack they sent me recently and this is the first try-out. What better place than where the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail crosses Port Townsend on it’s way between Glacier National Park in Montana and Olympic NP to the west of us. It’s 1200 miles of some of the best scenery in America and it goes right through town. 

I’d have to say, this appears to be the best pack I’ve ever had on my back. How many I’ve had total, I cannot say, but this one is the most comfortable and much of the time it didn’t even feel like it was back there at all. I loaded it up with all the dry gear I’ll be carrying this summer, which means everything except fluids and food, and it came in at about 15 lbs. That’s FIFTEEN pounds for the pack, sleeping bag, cook kit, sleeping pad, TENT and all the rest of the stuff it takes to travel comfortably in the backcountry for a few days.

A decade ago, my fully-loaded pack was about 40 lbs.  I’m in my 70’s now, and the only way I can stay ‘out there’ is by traveling light. Thankfully, the camping industry has stayed with us older people and ultralight equipment is making my life easier each year. I wish I had this stuff decades ago.

This pack is their Fusion 65,  a big pack for me but it’s still just a tad over 3 lbs, or about half of my former ones. It has a variety of shoulder harnesses and attachments to make it fit perfectly – and it does! It also has some thoughtful features, a roll top on the main bag to make it compress and be waterproof no matter how much you cram into it. It has 7 other pockets, enough to divide up your goodies, and four on the front I can get to while walking. Cue the snacks.

So, why is all this about art? For me, a painter or nature, it’s about getting out and staying out in wilderness as late into my life as possible. Day hikes are great, but nothing hits it for me than sleeping in a mountain meadow with the marmots and deer. It’s clearly a spiritual-thing, going to these untrammeled places. We may build churches to go inside where we close our eyes and try to find spiritual meaning, but isn’t it better to find the same thing with eyes open? For me, as it was with Muir and Thoreau, it’s sitting in a mountain meadow. I take my paints or at least a sketch pad, of course, because by running my hand around a page it heightens the experience about 10 fold. I see, really see what’s there – a real meditative pleasure I never get tired of. These days, I don’t believe anyone is too ‘old’ to do this, it’s simply a matter of getting passionate about it – and the rest will happen. 71 years ago, I got that passion right away and it simply hasn’t left. Questions about how a 73 year-old guy does this, just ask.

First solo camp at 2 years. Mom slept in the car but I didn’t know it.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

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, New Painting Post

Crater Lake Institute

Second large painting for Crater Lake Institute of the lake, 2010. It features whitebark pines, an endangered tree most know as beautiful and iconic to this place.

Just an update about a side project of mine. Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park has held a fascination for me for a very long time. I first came over the Rim in the early 1970’s and saw that stunning view of the lake – and have returned many times since. Then in 1998 Nancy and I  produced a nature guide of the park and I got the chance to get to know the place on a deeper level. There’s a simple clean beauty here that stays with me. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean!

Then in 2016, I became the website guy for Crater Lake Institute, a group dedicated to the back story of the park. With decades of collective history, these guys had a website that needed help, and I had the skills to fix it.  Today, CLI averages almost a million hits a month in summer, has 5000 images and 4000 pages of anything you’d ever want to know about the park. It’s a handful to maintain, I’m telling you, but it’s also taught me a lot about the place. We’ve partnered with REI’s hiking Hiking Project to share our trail knowledge and we hear the park staff regularly stops in to find stuff. It’s been a fun project.

Commissioned Paintings
Below are some other paintings commissioned by Crater Lake Institute and their president, Ron Mastrogiuseppe. All these feature stressed environments caused by human interference. All enlarge with a click.

Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Hot Springs
Electric Peak in Yellowstone with a stand of Whitebark Pines in trouble.
Whitebark Pines in the Rocky Mountains

Check out the website when you have a few minutes. You’ll want to visit, I just know it.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

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.

Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Nancy Cherry Eifert, National Park Service, New Painting Post, Posts about other stuff, Wildlife

Eifert Painting on the Ferry

Yesterday we were coming home to Port Townsend on our little ferry. Parked on the car deck and walked up to confront one of my paintings in jigsaw puzzle form right on the table in front of us. Perfect, said Nancy and proceeded to put the thing together.  I mostly watched a gloriously calm sunset after a big blow in the morning that shut the boat down, but still added a few pieces to the effort. This is a painting I did for Mount Rainier National  Park years ago and is still installed there, the main attraction to the Ohanapecosh Visitor Center. It’s also still a puzzle – and who knows how many of these things are floating around the world. Thousands.

Now, I know it’s a bit of a stretch to say this is actually ‘public art’, but bear with me. I first figured out how to put my better National Park art on puzzles in the 1990’s, first with a company from Germany, then we did it ourselves through a great group called Impact Photographics. It takes a pile of doubt or at least a credit score. Various others have made puzzles, too, and I’m guessing we’ve published over 80 different images. Currently, Nautilus Puzzles from California is actually making them out of real laser-cut wood that cost as much as some of my early paintings did!

These days, we’re not as aggressive with this, but still supply them to parks and stores. We once found one in Hawaii at the Pahoa Farmer’s Market under a pile of used clothes and books.

I’m not here to advertise buying puzzles, but instead to just say that this sure has been a wide and complex life. I have painting projects going on right now about restoring Northwest salmon, a bison mural in South Dakota, a Florida project involving dolphins and octopus, nesting terns and sharks. I’m proud to say I’m sponsored by a great backpacking equipment company called Six Moon Designs that help get me out there in comfort, and by a truly wonderful partner. Nancy keeps it all running behind the scenes as well as on the road – or on the ferry.

I guess what this post is all about is for me to just say thanks to everyone for all of this. It takes an amazing number of consistently interested people to keep our little lifestyle going for all these decades. I wish I could give back, but with the next paintings in progress, maybe I am.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

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, New Painting Post, Wildlife

Wind Cave National Park

I submitted this painting a few days ago – I think it’s close to finished and thought I’d show it off here. Wind Cave National Park is in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a fantastic place with patches of prairie, rolling tree-covered hills and an amazing cave network. Somehow it all had to be jammed into one painting, along with the bison, prairie dogs and all the rest of the amazing wildlife most see there when they visit. This bit of art is going on the back of the new park map, meaning an Eifert painting gets to go home with most of the 650,000 people who come each year.

This is the map publication with art in place. I like the way the critters overflow the black NPS band on the left. And below is the original first draft concept sketch I did on location, one of seven. Quite a difference from the final art.

So, how does this all happen? While there on the site visit, I tend to take photos while drawing, LOTS of photos. I don’t really know how the painting is going to evolve, so I take ground shots, close-up details like the two below. That little dung beetle was working hard and eventually made it into the final art. These little guys roll up the bison poo and then just continue on to who-knows-where, rolling their little ball along. The ponderosa was the one I used for the main feature on the entire right side of the painting, as well as the foreground reference to the forest duff.

There may be more small changes as the park takes a look, but I think I’m about there on this effort. I have art is many nearby parks near here, Badlands and Devils Tower, but this one beautiful place has eluded me until now. Yahhh.

If you would like to sign up for my periodic blogs as emails, you can do it here.

Thanks for reading this week.

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.

Hiking, New Painting Post, New Published Story, Wildlife

Starry Flounder in 48 North

Yesterday I received my copy of 48 North magazine in the mail, and here is my page. Always amazed when the greens print nicely, and they did this time, subtle shades that aren’t easy to reproduce. For some reason, that color hates me in print. Flounders, flatfish, are always favorites of mine to paint. These fish begin life swimming upright like normal fish, eyes on both sides, then later they get lazy and settle onto the seafloor to await food that swims by. Since predators need good vision to catch prey, the eye that faces downward migrates around to the other side. I’m not kidding, but if you’re a flatfish fisherman, you will have seen this most every time you catch one. I find them fascinating.

So here’s my story that went with the art:

A face only a mother could love. Starry flounders are just one species of 23 local ‘flatfish’. Flat because they tend to spend their time lying flat on the bottom, on either their right or left sides. Beginning life, they’re just a ‘normal’ fish that swim upright, an eye on each side of a vertical body. As they age, they spend more time laying sideways on the bottom, lying prone and just waiting for pry to swim close enough to grab. Soon, strange things happen with the growing juveniles, and it’s not just hormones. It’s a major anatomical change. One of their eyes actually migrates around their head to the other side, stopping just short of the other one. Now, the upside view has a pair of eyes looking for the next meal. These are hunters, after all, and they need binocular vision to assess distance. So, the flounder then has its same two eyes, but now they’re on the upper side of the body, like two little periscopes.

Starry flounders can grow to 36” long, or bigger than the size of a garbage can lid. At this size, they’re approaching 20 lbs and they can live upwards of 20 years. They’re often found near shore in bays or even fresh water and throughout the coastal North Pacific. They sport namesake star-like scales on both the lighter downside and darker upper side. The distinctive black bands on outer fins make it an easy flatfish to identify, and they can alter their colors to match surroundings. As predators, they often settle on a sandy bottom and wiggle their fins to cover themselves with sand and debris to hide. With only eyes showing as they move independently gazing about, and a mouth just waiting to go to work, they wait for a hapless crab or small fish to wander by, and then ‘wham’. Look for these fish as you bring your skiff through shallow water towards the beach. The fish’s outline is usually obvious from above.

I’m going to be expanding this blog a bit, adding more art from my partner in crime, Nancy Cherry Eifert, and essays on hiking and seeking wildness. This blog seems to be growing into something bigger than just art and it’s evolving. So I should too.

This next hiking season, I’m being sponsored by Six Moon Designs, an ultra-light backpacking gear company from Oregon. After hiking for decades in heavy old gear, and trying desperately to lighten my load, here’s an example of what they’re letting me try out. My tent weight just went from 6 lbs to less then 2! This is the Six Moon Lunar Solo tent. Check it out here. Or, I’ll see  you on the trail in a couple of months with a smile on my face.

If you want to sign up for my periodic blogs as emails, you can do it here.

Thanks for reading this week.

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.

Nancy Cherry Eifert, New Painting Post

A Chickadee and Blueberries – From Nancy

A new painting from Nancy, a tasty study of a chickadee and blueberries after an early frost. We have both the bird and berries right here in our meadow (along with an occasional frost), and the copper leaves this time of year make a nice painting. These little birds don’t eat the berries, instead, they hop around gleaning the insects and spiders that live among them.

This is new: We’re expanding the blog to also show Nancy’s paintings and photographs, as well as some other things going on here. Over the years, I’ve posted upwards of 500 of these pages. My new paintings will still be here as usual. Nancy’s painting style is reminiscent of mine, probably because we share a studio and she paints on some of my big paintings from time to time. Or, maybe it’s the other way around, I paint like Nancy.  While she has her own website at NancyCherryEifert.com, this blog has a nice readership – so I thought it would be meaningful to share what we do. This chickadee seems a good start. we both hope you like it.

Here’s the framed painting, photographed not 50 feet from the blueberry model it was painted from. These mountain blueberry leaves go from green to a pale yellow in fall, then immediately turn these bronze colors in a real show of color

This painting is available for sale. It’s framed like it shows here and the outside measurements are about 12″ x 15″. The acrylic painting is on board and is 6″x 9″.  It’s matted and framed under glass. Framed just as it looks here, it’s $175 plus some Priority Mail shipping. Just let us know if you’re interested by emailing us at either nancy@nancycherryeifert.com, or larry@larryeifert.com.

Thanks for reading this week.

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, Nancy Cherry Eifert, US Fish Wildlife Service, Waysides, Wildlife

Malheur Refuge Wildlife Painting

This is another painting I did for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon – remember the hostile take-over by the Bundy Clan? This was that place!

I was given some nice leeway on these efforts, so I could add some mental candy, a soft sunset coming to mind here. They were fun paintings to do, because I just plan likw painting wildlife. Below is a detailed version of a section.

It can get very crowded at Malheur, as you can see below. This is one of Nancy’s photos, an amazing mass of wildlife that proves, yes, you still CAN see this sort of thing in America, but only if we pay taxes to keep it this way. Want to see this? Go to Malheur in March or April, get a room in the one-and-only decent motel – and go geese watching. You won’t forget it easily. By the way, these birds are ALL talking while they’re doing this!

Below is the reference painting I worked from, certainly not copying it, but just a ‘feeling’ reference. I did this one for The Nature Conservancy a couple of years ago at the Carson River Project in Nevada. I always liked the softness of this landscape, backed up against the High Sierra. Lake Tahoe is just over the ridge. I think the painting holds together nicely.

And below is the original refined sketch, after the rough concept drawing. This is the step before painting begins, and while it’s certainly not like the final, it comes close enough to call it good at this stage.

I’m going to be expanding this blog in the next few weeks, adding more art from my partner in crime, Nancy Cherry Eifert, and essays on hiking and seeking wilderness. This blog seems to be growing into something bigger than just art and it’s evolving. So I should too.

Thanks for reading this week.

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.