Click on the image and see it enlarged in your browser. Just too much going on in the drawing to miss out.
Recently, a friend asked me if I still enjoyed making art. Strange question for me – it’s simply what I do. Glacier National Park: this project might appear daunting as hell, but, for me, it’s a real kick. So yes, I still enjoy making art – especially if it looks hopeless and then I save it from crashing. It’s just never ‘safe’.
This painting will eventually become the back of the new Glacier National Park map, the one you get at the gate along with the other 3.3 million visitors each year. It’s the 7th park I’ve painted these for and none have been easy and safe, not a single one. I know Glacier pretty well. I spent a summer there decades ago painting and hiking, but not well enough to just start drawing.
Above is the original concept, with a view of the foreground showing an alpine ecosystem, bears, goats, sheep, marmots and pikas. Beyond that, the scene opens up in a giant oblique aerial view. Easy? Not so much!
And then this: we were supposed to meet there with park staff from Glacier and Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia in August, but the Blackfeet Tribe closed all park entrances on the east side because of COVID. So, gone was any idea of actually getting first-hand knowledge. I did what I like to do, I just make this all up, just started drawing and out came a pretty acceptable painting design.
Here’s version 2, getting it defined.
Then a conference call with park staff happened and we decided to add a living glacier on the right, more glaciers in the middle mountain which is now much bigger and closer.
And I think we’re closing in on how it will look. Using a bunch of web photos from the park’s Flicker account, and the park map (below), it’s feeling like it actually might work. Stay tuned for more as this project develops. I’m thrilled it actually might look like something.
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Larry Eifert
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