Tag Archives: Murals

Commissioned paintings, Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, Nancy Cherry Eifert, New Painting Post, Washington State Parks, Wildlife

The Mount St Helens project

I’ve been working on this project since May, but the painting didn’t really start until August. I’ll bet over a million brush strokes! I’m close to finishing painting 24 images for the big revamping of the Washington State Park’s visitor center at Mt St Helens National Monument. I’m told it’s one of the biggest interpretive projects ever for Washington State Parks.

I’ve already made some art for this fantastic park before, but that was a series of outside wayside panels for the US Forest Service placed around the mountain, plus a big painting that we eventually made into a puzzle. This current effort is at Silver Lake on the park’s west side, a big visitor center built right after the eruption in 1980. I’m working with EDX in Seattle who did the designs and asked me to do the art. Sure glad they did – it’s been interesting.

For this post, I’ll focus on just the wetlands tabletop, 17 feet long and 4 feet wide, it’s one of the most complex visitor center exhibits I’ve painted. Other parts of the project will be posted soon.

I have few finished photos of this, but I did get the tabletop main painting scanned – a whopping 4.5 gigabits of data that will be printed on aluminum (I think).

Drawing and the beginnings of the painted art.
Final painting for the tabletop, about 17′ wide.
Part of the left side of the tabletop.

The tabletop has all sorts of lift lids showing hidden critters beneath them. There are spinners that show the eruption, another with the evolution of Silver Lake. It’s a very busy thing and I’m hoping kids will love it.

On my next post, I’ll get into the smaller pieces of art, then the second wall (an entirely different theme and painting 14′ long).

Nancy on the boardwalk at Silver Lake. Enough wood here to build several houses, and it’s in good shape – goes on for half a mile. The volcano is straight ahead but still 25m away.

In case you don’t remember what the mountain looks like, here’s a puzzle we did some years ago for 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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, National Park Service, New Painting Post

Glacier Park sloppy mural details

I posted about this painting of Glacier National Park recently, and now I’ve scanned it for the next step in becoming the back of the park map. As I was scanning and then cleaning up the file in Photoshop, I was struck with how loose and abstract my stuff gets when you zoom in on it. Brush strokes, smudges, finger prints, cat hair, my hair (what’s left of it) is all in here, stuck down forever. I think it’s a good view of my painting process, so here are some samples I screen-grabbed as I went.

This first one is the ptarmigan chicks in the center foreground. Notice the while lines around the heads to help bring that out from the background. And the vague indication of the rocks that are only a few brush strokes building from dark to light.  Not detailed at all, none of it, but it still suffices to tell the story. Click on all these to see larger versions in your browser. It helps understand what I’m showing.

And here is the ram’s head on the painting’s right. In the closeup details on the second image, you can see it’s really just a gauzy overlay of white that makes for the final presentation, and you can see again that this entire animal was initially painted dark umber to begin with.

Lower left corner with the snowshoe hare and butterfly, it all works pretty well at this resolution, but blow it up so you can actually see the brush strokes and it’s pretty darned abstract.

And finally, the area around the elk, flowers and sedges, alpine landscape with the stream. It looks okay at this normal resolution.

But as I zoom in on it, the thing falls apart fairly quickly.

If I presented this in a gallery situation, would it work? Probably, because people will buy anything = witness the last presidency. But there’s not much fine detail here except some dabs and dashes of paint. What I’m trying to get across here is that big paintings are really just that, dabs and dashes. I get questions about my process and I’d have to say here that it’s all just dabbing and dashing, splashing paint on a flat surface and standing back every few minutes to see how it’s going. In the end, it’s a huge finished thing that looks okay, but every moment is just abstract art in each very tiny area – then repeat over and over.

What IS this, anyway? What an abstract or maybe even non-objective piece of art.

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, New Painting Post

Glacier National Park map mural

Click on the image and see it enlarged in your browser. Just too much going on in the drawing to miss out.

Glacier National Park concept 2 in design

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.

Glacier concept 1

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.

Glacier National Park concept 2

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.

Glacier concept 3

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.

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.

Giclee prints, Murals, National Park Service

New – Canvas Prints from Murals

Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Hot Springs

I’ve been getting many requests for one-off prints of my larger paintings. Call us disorganized, I guess, but we emptied the lock box of about 100 transparencies and digital scans, and now I  have  a new section on the website for giclee prints of paintings. Many of these can be printed wall-sized, I mean 7 to 10 feet wide, but most requests I get are more in the 3 to 4 feet size. So, if you want to see what I have up here so far, check out the ever-expanding list. Hopefully I’ll have around 100  or more when I’m finished. Some haven’t been seen in decades (I haven’t even seen them in decades either, and some are really pretty good).

Here’s another that was painted for The Nature Conservancy at Great Salt Lake. The original art is in their visitor center there, but few have seen it. It would make a pretty good canvas print, don’t you think.

Again, here’s the link to the current list.

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.

Commissioned paintings, Murals

Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center

We were out in the rainy Hoh Rainforest, commissioned to take installation photos by the project designer in Washington D.C. Nancy took some very tasty images and I thought I’d share them here. This project ended last summer, but no good photos existed of it, and project artists, designers and builders need these for examples to show for future adventures. This old guy just happened by for one of the shots. That’s a see-through painting of Mount Olympus on the right, a complex collection of forest floor paintings on the tabletop – and beyond is the real thing.

Look out the windows past the art and this is the view. Big Sitka spruce is what this beautiful place is all about. I feel fortunate to have my art here, an installation that will be enjoyed long after I’m gone from walking these trails.

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. Art, words and life from a former generation.

Murals, New Painting Post, Wildlife

El Malpais mural

El Malpais National Monument mural painting completed

I finished my El Malpais National Monument mural a few days ago. Of course they don’t know about it yet because the park staff is shutdown, but I thought I’d post it here to let everyone else know that artists don’t get sent home – we ARE home. Park staff isn’t getting paid, and neither am I.

Enough of that! The progressive steps of this painting are shown below, from the concept sketch created on location in Grants New Mexico, to the refined sketch and finally the painted version on top. Scroll to the bottom to see the chronological progression in reverse. 

This painting shows the rather amazing and pristine high desert plateau landscape right on the Continental Divide in central New Mexico. This giant park has over 400 lava caves, ancient pueblo ruins, sandstone cliffs, vast lava flows, cinder cones and some of the oldest Douglas-fir trees on the planet. The painting shows most of these components, and also several cave entrances, bats emerging for the evening, a ringtail watching them pass. There are two tinajas, or waterpockets with frogs and others coming to drink after a hot day in the desert. This part is on sandstone, like the background cliffs. There are ancient junipers that were probably here 1000 years ago when the pueblo was occupied, and lots of pot shards are littering the ground. We saw all this, and much more I couldn’t get in while on our site visit last spring. 

The design for the park’s map brochure.

This painting will be going to the main visitor center in Grants, but a larger copy with also be produced for an exhibit there. The real reason for this, however, is that it’s going on the back of the new park map brochure, so each year over 100,000 people get to take it home with them – along with this painting of mine. This part of the project is being produced by the excellent staff at the National Park Service’s Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia. They always do great things with my paintings. I know the production will be top-notch.

Super-refined sketch prior to painting. This one was drawn in the studio here in Port Townsend and was the final draft before painting.
Refined sketch number seven, also drawn on location.
ELMA sketch #7

Above is the initial sketch photographed for big screen presentation at the park. I did this on the pavement at the hotel in Grants New Mexico, then loaded into my laptop and piped it onto the big screen for the park to see and comment on while I listened and wrote comments. This is sketch #7, the final one attempted and it was heartily approved. Even the superintendent was there, which is a rarity for me.

This was drawn on location, along with half a dozen others, but wasn’t a specific place. It has all the ‘elements of El Malpais, but doesn’t hold faithful to any ‘stand here and see this’ location. I think I nailed it pretty well.

El Malpais means Badlands – they sure are.

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

New Painting Post

El Malpais National Monument sketch #2

Revision time – stay with me on this. I know this isn’t in color, but pencil drawing is almost a lost skill, and I’m still fairly good with it. Lots of people ask me how it is to work for the National Park Service. Well, it’s like a bunch of bananas, there’s good and bad, sometimes in the same bunch. So far, this project has been all good!

A few posts ago, I showed the first detailed sketch for this New Mexico painting, the one below. Now the park has made requests for changes, with plenty of ‘please’s. An entirely new sketch was called for.  No complaints, all their thoughts were valid, and some things I just plain forgot to add. The top sketch was submitted this week for a second review. What’s the difference? Bigger cave, straightened the right tree, removed the left tree, cliff bigger, and most of all, an aspen – Douglas-fir grove on the left with plenty of a’a lava. That’s the lava that looks impossible to walk on, and is (see the photo below). At El Malpais National Monument, it’s mixed with lots of pahoehoe, the ropy lava that flows like water in its molten form. This place, west of Albuquerque, has 400 lava caves, so it was important to show more of that, too.Below, our guide-ranger in a mass of a’a lava. Impossible to walk on, impossible to paint! Somewhere in this mess is my phone, still sitting where it fell out of my pack and, for me, gone forever! And below a pot shard from one of the almost-invisible pueblo ruins. They wanted more of these, which is shown in the new sketch along the foreground. This piece was just sitting on the ground and is probably over 1000 years old. The hand-painted lines are far more skilled than modern pots from the same tribe that are made for tourists.

Soon, I’ll get either a go-ahead on the final art, or a request for some additional changes – not likely anything imposing. Too many pronghorn, a smaller peregrine falcon, stuff like that. I’m eager to paint this because, as usual, I’ll get a chance to relive the very tasty experience of going there this past summer.

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.

New Painting Post

El Malpais National Monument painting sketch

(click to enlarge it in your browser) I’m presenting this sketch tomorrow to the National Park Service and El Malpais National Monument as we proceed through the process of developing this painting. The final painting will be used on the back of the park map, the handout you get when you visit. I’ve done these before for other parks and talk about putting art in the hands of the many, this is sure a way to do that.

Just to remind you, here’s the original concept sketch. Comparing the two is a great way to show the ‘process’ of making art like this.

Few wildflowers are here, at least obvious ones. This is a very arid and high-deserty place very near the Continental Divide in New Mexico, so, I focused on the critters – and there are a bunch of them. It’s fun to develop these projects, to start with a white piece of paper and bring in one element at a time. Of all these birds and animals, I think there were only a couple that needed to be resized to fit their neighbor’s size. This is the most difficult thing to pull off, because you can’t put a coyote next to, say, a mouse, or an elk next to a bobcat and call it even somewhat realistic.

More soon as this project develops.

Thanks for reading this week – and the entire year for that matter.
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.

Murals, New Painting Post, Waysides, Wildlife

Aztec Ruins National Monument – Along the Animas River

This week I moved on from this completed painting for Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico. Projects are piling up here. Below is the sketch I posted some weeks back, and it’s a great example of things changing as they go along. The Park Service, of course, hates change, but, I don’t know, it just happened. The entire thing got reversed, river got bigger (like it is), cottonwoods got smaller (like they are), the chickadee changed into a turkey. It’s just the process of creating something from nothing but a blank piece of paper.

Some things remained, especially this little desert cottontail that I followed around the native plant garden near the visitor center. I could have petted it if I’d had a Cheeto to use as a bribe.

And here’s the river in summer when I was there. A green ribbon of life. Amazingly, even though the bottomland is packed with people, the original ecosystem is almost perfectly intact, right down to the cougars and bobcats. This will become a wayside exhibit panel with some text added to explain all this. It turned out pretty well, I think.

Again, here’s the link to the NEW new puzzle I talked about last week.

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.