Tag Archives: Lighthouses

New Painting Post

Point Wilson Light – A New Painting

Click image and it should enlarge in your browser.

Still available for $1750, framed.

Lots of very low tides recently, and this view (at least to me) of our local lighthouse never disappoints. This is a fairly large painting, 24″ x 48″ acrylic on canvas, and framed right now as you see it (but we can change that for you).

I can also change the frame to this one, a hemlock simple and varnished.

The most interesting thing about this place is not that it’s a beautiful spot right here in my town, but that it’s the very point that divides the Strait of Juan deFuca with Puget Sound, a direct connection to the ocean that’s about 90 miles northwest of  here. It’s real ocean environment here on the west side, with a cooler and wilder ocean with kelp beds, real waves and a feel of the north. East of the lighthouse, just a few  hundred yards from here, it’s Port Townsend Bay, Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound – a vastly different place with sheltered bays, a calm and collected environment where most of the people around here live. They say the richest and most interesting locations are ‘edge’ places, just like this. I love it!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 48″ and $1750 our price, not gallery price. Outside edge of the frame is about 28″ x 51″.
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. I’m trying to expand my list. An email 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

Point Wilson Commissioned Painting

(click the image and it’ll enlarge in our browser.)

Yes, I still occasionally still do commissions – if they’re fun and challenging., I’m most interesting in a life that’s stuck out there a bit, so I still look for challenges. One doesn’t have a past like mine, of climbing mountains and sailing to the Sea of Cortez and Alaska, of trying to make a living from my paintings and all the rest without realizing there should ALWAYS be challenges – and the bigger the better. We were talking with an old friend the other day: “what are you doing” “As little as possible” was her response. I mean, what the heck sort of life is THAT? If I EVER say that, just shoot me (metaphorically-speaking, since I don’t believe in guns).

So, I was approached by a very nice woman who’s a ‘lifer’ here in Port Townsend. She lives right in town in the same house she and her husband bought in the 1950’s! Many afternoons she heads for Point Wilson Lighthouse nearby for her exercise – goes down the beach in her blue sweats, around the light and up the hill. She showed me photos that her husband took many decades ago of the cypress trees on that hill, and, so, would I be interested in painting something that she could look at on days she doesn’t walk. Point Wilson, Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan, and maybe ME sailing in Sea Witch. I couldn’t resist.

Here’s my reference photo, five photos crammed together to help me figure it out. The mountains weren’t ‘out’ that day, but I had other references for that part. For the many that read my blog but aren’t Northwesterners, this spot is at the north end of Port Townsend in Fort Worden State Park. It’s where the waters of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound converge – and has a mile-long sand beach on one side, a rocky cliff beach on the other. I’ve painted many images here. 24″ x 48″ acrylic on canvas.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.

Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

Low Water at Point Wilson

Low-Water-at-Point-Wilson

This is, I think, one of the most intriguing places here in our little town of Port Townsend, and I’ve painted it often. Every container ship, submarine, aircraft carrier, sailboat or killer whale going into Puget Sound has to go right by here, and at low tide it’s a pretty dramatic and busy place. On a recent walk, we were here on a minus tide, just before the big rush of water began that would completely submerge this spot, so I spent a few minutes of peace and quite, unusual without waves or noise -just a perfect moment to compose a painting.

I get LOTS of comments on this blog about my painting process. Do I paint on location (well, certainly not when it’s 45 degrees), do I work from a photo (it’s just a basic starting point, like a sketch where I can remember details)? So here’s the reference photo I took with my phone-camera. An interesting transformation from photo to painting, don’t you think? Where’d the kelp go? Well, after working with it on the sketch, I realized kelp was completely unnecessary and made the rocks look like mush. Better to focus on the luminousity of the water instead. I say, learn to spot a locked door and climb in a window instead!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on hardboard, 22″ x 28″ and $700 unframed.
We have some good frames for this one, but it’s a big enough painting that we’ll figure that out when you buy it. It’s going into a show at Gallery Nine, so if you’d like it, better jump quickly. Not that I’m bragging, but the last one went in 20 minutes and there were five who wanted it. This is the original painting, NOT a print and it’s being sold without the gallery commission. There will soon be prints of this on the website for our normal prices – here’s an example of another one).
Email us for details if you’re interested.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography. She’s just posted a blog about the new sea otter pup at the Seattle Aquarium. Amazing.

Uncategorized

Point Wilson – Spring Driftpile redo

(It appears my server decided to only send this out to just a few on the mailing list, so we’re doing it again. I apologize if you got this twice.)

I’ve always enjoyed the vibrancy of watercolor and India ink. It was a style I learned early-on as a kid, and I’ve never tired of it. On our recent little “drive around the block”, I tried doing some of these in the car while underway, and it wasn’t easy. No, I didn’t draw and drive (as a friend said).

And so, I thought I’d continue here in my studio and on location. A bit more steady of hand, I’d say. The fun part for me is that I splash the paint on with very few indicators or sketch marks. It looks positively awful at that stage, but the ink layer brings it all together, and the image appears almost by itself. The pen I use is a green Cross, originally made decades ago when I bought it new. The first gold point it had I wore down to a nub, so that the lines looked like a felt pen. Oh, and it leaked all over the place, forcing me to keep a towl always at the ready. I dearly loved that tool, and was more than happy when I found out that Cross gladly rebuilds old pens – and for no charge. Now, it’s going strong with a major rebuild. Feels like an old friend.

This ORIGINAL watercolor and ink painting is on Arches paper, 10″ x 14″ and $240 unframed.
A double-mat and mahogany frame makes it a total of $279 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to see this post on the blog page, along with all the other posts.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography. There’s some great new flower images from  her garden.

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Road Trip – The Big Easy

St Charles Street Car – New Orleans

We could have ridden this all day long! First operated in 1833, New Orlean’s St Charles Street Car Line runs from Canal Street near the “Quarter” all he way out past Uptown, the Garden District and Magazine Street. When it gets to the end, the conductor simply turns all the seats around, goes to the other end of the car and off it goes in the other direction. For most of the way, the line goes down a grand oak-shaded boulevard with grass under the tracks and branches brushing the car’s top. The driver is loud and verbal, yelling out the names of streets and how “they’s lots of really stupid people, you know”.  One time he picked up a rider but said: “Don’t you dare think I’ll stop here again. Next time, you march yourself down to the next stop”. He was yelling, and they have to yell, because the trucks (yes, train car wheels are called trucks) are screeching and grinding into turns that thousands upon thousands of other wheels have rolled on, and the brass and hardwood construction isn’t what it used to be (but we think it’s better than it used to be). All the windows open fully, so you can hang  out and watch the stately homes going by – no guard rails, no ADA compliant, just great experiences without the Nanny State reeling you in.

And, to finish the story, the neighborhood street car dumps you in the French Quarter where you can buy a hand grenade to finish up with. It’s simply one of the great rides in America, and it’s only a buck and a quarter. Oh, and a hand grenade? It’s a frozen fruit slushy with pineapple and lime … and four shots of Everclear. Don’t know what Everclear is? It’s 185 proof pure grain alcohol, the French Quarter’s most powerful drink (outside of paint remover).

So that was the good news. The bad: It is just heart breaking to see Katrina’s footprint, the ruined and abandoned stately old houses in the Seventh and Ninth Wards. We camped in an RV park in the Seventh and each morning going into downtown on the shuttle we’d pass blocks of century-old smashed up homes, which is tragic, but I’d say 80% are now coming back to life. And they aren’t just replacing them with plastic sheetrock wonders you see across America, but they’re carefully putting the old ladies back together. Most of the old oaks are still here too, unlike my town of Port Townsend where they seem to hate an old tree. Here’s they’re treating the big trees like injured old-timers, which of course they are. “Hell of a job, Brownie” is the phrase that kept going through my head, that insane Bush statement that things were just dandy in the Big Easy after the hurricane passed. It might have been a big hurricane, but it was a man-made disaster because we didn’t maintain the levees properly.

If you get a chance, I’d recommend a little vacation to this amazing city on the Mississippi. It’s worth the effort to help retain a truly special place that belongs to all of us.

Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Uncategorized

Admiralty Head Lighthouse


It’s a traditional landscape this week!

The other day, while we were waiting for the Port Townsend – Keystone ferry on Whitbey Island, we walked over to take a few snaps of the nearby old Fort Casey batteries and this great old lighthouse. The lighthouse actually predates the surrounding fort by decades, having initially been built in 1861. It has to be one of most interesting lights on the West Coast with a sort-of Spanish look to it (although it was designed by a German). I really should have painted it looking seaward, because across the channel the Olympics, Point Wilson Light and Port Townsend create a vast and beautiful panorama, but I’ll leave that for another painting. Maybe a bigger canvas!

I’ve also been working on some larger “park” murals recently but have really enjoyed these smaller efforts on canvas. I’ll keep at it for awhile – it seems you all like them too.
This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

To check availability of the other small originals I’ve blogged about the past few weeks, check the blog here.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints and other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently doing.

Or, send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.

New Painting Post

Pink Point

Point Wilson Lighthouse is on the north end of Port Townsend. It’s an old fort too, Fort Worden State Park, where all manner of music and art happens, the largest poetry press outside of New York (that won a Pulitzer this year), a woodworking school and a bunch of other stuff that goes on year-round. I played a mess of blues a few years ago at the Blues Camp, but, it’s the lighthouse that continually draws me in. Maybe it’s because it’s also that living place where the waters of Puget Sound and the great Straits of Juan deFuca meet, a wild and crazy place of currents, wind and waves – and I always like being on the edge of something.

Here’s the point when I sailed by it awhile ago. What a different scene when you’re at the mercy of wind and waves! Tourist kayakers regularly get caught here on a big ebb and swept out into the Straits, causing all manner of Coast Guard rescue actions and heroic photos in the papers.

SOLD

This painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $150 unframed. The gold frame makes it a total of $180 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. Email us for details. This one isn’t going on the main website .

Thanks for looking this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to send us an email to opt in or out of our email family – or just ‘talk’ with us.

New Painting Post

Beachgrass at Point Wilson Lighthouse

This beach is loosing sand in winter storms. Thought I’d better paint it before it’s completely gone. Point Wilson Light is the dividing line between Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan deFuca – a big deal to boaters. The Indians disliked rounding this point so much they instead opted to drag their huge canoes overland through what is now Port Townsend. But I love it here on this point, with wild waves and kelp beds, sandy beaches (rare for this area) and lots of wildlife. Prints are available, and as of April 2008, so is the original painting. If you’re interested, email us.