Tag Archives: Murals

New Painting Post

Fort Townsend Old-growth mural – almost in our backyard

 

 

(Lots going on in this sketch – this should enlarge if you click on it)

((Sorry to say, but my server has been playing some evil tricks with me. Hopefully the blog is back in business.))

I paint this stuff all over the country, from Alaska to the Great Smoky Mountains, but very rarely have I been able to accept a large mural commission within a mile or so of our home. Here’s the sketch almost ready for painting – and it’ll be fun for me.

Fort Townsend is an old army barracks that supposedly protected Port Townsend about 150 years ago. In reality, the town protected the fort, and so as time went on the property fell into the hands of the Washington State Parks – and now it’s one of the rarest lowland old-growth forests in Puget Sound. It’s dry country here 40 miles northwest of Seattle (yes, it’s true) and with only 18″ of rain annually, the trees don’t get very big. Because it’s never been logged and the ground has been undisturbed for about 8,000 years, some pretty rare plants grow here. You can find calypso orchids, candystick, gnome plant, pinedrops and spotted coralroot. These are all interesting plants that live off other plants – so they aren’t green, and this painting is all about showing that. Candystick looks just like its name. It’s a colorful stick like something you’d find at the candy store. To get this sketch going, I simply used my backyard plant and bird list for the pileated woodpecker, brown creeper and all the rest. The deer is from a photo from our front yard. The squirrel, chipmunk and most of the small birds could be drawn from life on our feeder every day.

When it’s finished, we’ll develop an exhibit in the park centered around the painting and its story, and each time we go there for a hike (and it’s often) I’ll feel like I’m a small part of this rare place. This project is being funded by a generous grant from the Friends of Fort Townsend (especially Ann and Nancy) and the Washington State Native Plant Society who know the value of art in education. Thanks to them for allowing me to show off  my backyard!

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.

New Painting Post

Swan Song for Necedah

This should enlarge if you click it. You can also see it on the blog at http://larryeifert.com/wordpress

Just one last post with the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge murals because I think I’ve messed with this as much I can possible can. A month ago there was a beautiful clean and white wall. Perfect! Or at least that’s what I always think at that stage – and then I started painting the darned thing. March vanished, along with the white wall. On the last post I said the reception would be March 6th (tonight 5-7 at Union Bank), and I think everyone knew I was mentally-strained because no one called me on it.

Someone once asked me how I knew when a painting is finished. “When I’ve spent the money!” But that’s not really a decent answer, because the money-thing has never been that much of an issue with me. The real answer might be: It’s finished when I can’t stand to look at it anymore – and after 35 days, I’m at that point, so it’s time for a divorce. As Dan Hicks sang: “how can I miss you if you don’t go away.” Sometimes it takes me years before I can stomach to look at something like this again, but sometimes when I see it again (well, sometimes), I actually like it. Sometimes I look at it later and I wonder who painted it. Sometimes I look at it and wish I could try again. Who knows that this one will be.

Whichever this is, it’s finished so let’s move on. At 130 feet, it’s one of the most complex big walls I’ve painted in awhile and it was a bunch of fun. Thanks, Nancy, for holding the fort, the business, the house, the meals and all the rest together for the month. Oh, and she did a bunch of painting too. I gauged it at 40 days. I finished 5 days less than that, mainly because of her.

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. There’s a good essay there on her anniversary of being a runner for 36 years!!

New Painting Post

Necedah Murals – Into the Forest

Yes, I’m into the forest and final week of this project – woo, woo.

Or not! At the moment I feel like I’ve lived for the past month in this beautiful place, surrounded by wolves and deer, woodpeckers and sandhill cranes. Like our own place here in Port Townsend, I know each and every tree, fern and critter – and don’t necessarily want to see Necedah National Wildlife Refuge leave my life – but it is leaving.

WEDNESDAY: 5-7pm FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY (for local readers of this blog)
Nancy and I are hosting a little openhouse this Wednesday evening as a going away party for the painting  as well as a thankyou to the bank for studio space. Wednesday, March 6 upstairs over Union Bank (formerly Frontier Bank) 2200 Sims Way in Port Townsend – from 5 to 7pm. That’s right next to Akamai Art – the best art store in Washington where it’s been so great to walk next door for that next round of #2 brushes.

It’s been an interesting project and it looks like this is going to work. The sketch was 15 feet long, painting is about 40 feet. The final digital imaging will be 130 feet – a far better experience for me than my usual scaffolding – up-down, up-down climbing around like a monkey – process. There are some changes I’d make for the next one, but I’d do it again tomorrow. I just love creating an entire world first in my head and then making it come alive on the canvas. I think it keeps me young, fresh and relevant. I was wondering how my 64 yr-old fingers would survive a rather long month of 6 days a week, but they did just fine. I’ve always heard that painting was an old man’s game – now I’m sure of it.

Our local paper, The Port Townsend Leader, did a very nice front page feature story this week, and you can see it here with some good photos. (thanks, Kathie – you did good)

Thanks for reading this week. Next week I’m back to projects for Mt St Helens, Mt Diablo and the new visitor center at the Schulman Grove of bristlecones. Never a dull moment around here!
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 been posting some Necedah mural images on her blog too.

New Painting Post

Necedah Wildlife Refuge – Second mural

 

If I have to pick up another paint brush – I’ll just throw up. That’s about the way it is right now. The fingers on this right hand of mine is loose, I’ll say that. And as for how well it’s still functioning, wine probably has something to do with it.

So here’s the second mural completed and ready for shipment. This one is about 12 feet long and 40% of the final size. After digitally enlargement, it’ll be about 29 feet long. What’s that black rectangle you ask? That’s where an underwater diorama exhibit goes. And how long did this one take? Eight days of painting, lots of help from Nancy who’s getting pretty darned good at mud.

And if you haven’t been following this stuff for awhile, this is for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin. You can see the rest of the progress at the blog listed below. Nancy’s also been blogging about this too and her link is below.

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.

New Painting Post

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge – Second Painting

Thanks, everyone, for all the good comments of these recent posts. Hope it’s Okay if I don’t answer every one of them. As you can see, we’re sort of busy right now.

While the first painting is at Malone Design in Georgia being scanned and printed at 300%, we’ve now begun the second mural for the refuge in Wisconsin. This one is all wetlands and there’s lots of water and sky, making it qo fairly quickly – at least quicker then the other with all those leaves and miles of grass. I’ve had to do some research on how cattails and bulrushes grow, the details of their rooting systems. Can’t do that in person around here, because it’s spring and there’s LOTS of water in all the local marshes covering them all up, but that’s what field guides are for.

This one won’t be blown up quite as large as the first one, but it’ll still be a whopper of an enlargement at 250% from the painting. It’s an interesting process, but I think I much prefer painting these big wall at final 100% size, even if it takes some ladder work. That way I know what I’m getting when I paint it – there isn’t any vagueness or question about how it’ll look in final form (and I might sleep better at night).

Thanks for reading this week. These both should enlarge if you click them.
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.

New Painting Post

Necedah murals – Day 20

 He looks grumpy, but it’s just concentration flowing to that little tiny brush tip!

Click here for a much larger view on the website. 

Far left side still isn’t finished, but we’re getting close. From right edge to the big tree is about 40 feet on the final 3x enlargement. I’m now beginning an entirely new painting equally as long while this section flies to Georgia today for scanning. After that it’ll return for me to finish the left side for that final 24 feet. We were fading a few days ago, but good friend Jan dropped by twice for some professional arm-twisting and muscle rubbing. I felt like a new man!

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.

New Painting Post

Day 12 – Necedah Refuge murals

Here’s the next installment of the progress on the two murals for Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. This photo represents about a tenth of the entire project. On the final installation, the image you’re looking at will be about 10 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Click the image and it should enlarge.

 This area is pretty much finished (the color’s a bit off since I photographed it under evening lights – sorry).  As a studio visitor said when I was working away on another section “while you paint, you don’t ever want to glance left or right down that long expanse of canvas, do you?” Right! Way too depressing – like I’m painting the Great Wall of China. Nancy’s been a true painter-partner on this project, doing the thankless duty of painting base textures and background – like millions of blades of grass. It truly steps up the pace – hear that, Michael? These big paintings, at least for me, are all about texture – fuzzy, messy and subtle colors that start from a very dark and stack up to a final highlight on top. Lots of layers! As it goes on, there becomes a mysterious point when it almost becomes a real place when you’re standing right on top of it.

Thanks for reading this week. Stay tuned for more progress.
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.

New Painting Post

Day 2-4 Necedah National Wildlife Refuge Murals

After a  bunch of round-and-round about sizes, measurements and materials, I’ve now begun two larger paintings for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. Stay tuned for progress reports. These two shots are Days 2-4 on the first painting.

Here’s the deal. It’s a new visitor center at the refuge in central Wisconsin. There are 130 feet of walls that need to show, in an artisitic way, five habitats all woven together, from prairie wetlands to sedge meadows, uplands prairie to oak savanna and finally pine forest. Tallest wall is about 12 feet. Normally, I’d do these on theater canvas and they’d be glued up, but we’re trying something technologically new (at least for me). We’re painting these at 30% of final size on Yupo plastic paper, an ultra smooth surface that’s good for high detail. When finished, they’ll be digitally scanned and blown up 300%. So far, the printed samples look pretty good, and it allows me to paint in a much smaller room, and much quicker – and if the visitor center burns down (which has happened), they can put up a fresh copy.

Thanks so much to Port Townsend’s Union Bank for giving me studio space in a community room. They’ve done this before on large projects and have really helped my painting process. While these two paintings are 30% of final size, I still need much bigger walls than I have here in my studio. Nancy’s down there painting away with me, and she’s helping to speed the process up. So far it’s been fun. The story of Necedah and how it relates to my past is an interesting one, but we’ll save that for another post.

Stay tuned for more soon. 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.

New Painting Post

Necedah Refuge Mural Sketches

This week it’s another sketch for the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. (this image should blow up larger if you click it) I begin the painting on this next week, and I’ll make sure I send some in-progress images as things progress. I must be getting better with my habitat knowledge, because of the entire 140 feet of sketches (no, I didn’t do them full-sized), I only had a half-dozen things that needed fixing.

That’s a lot of critters! I loved doing these drawings – it’s art that really can’t be sold very easily, but I sure like to do it. It’s also a skill that’s critical to all else that follows, like the painting itself. Without a good foundation sketch, the painting would fail, or at least take much longer as I fumble around with it.

This is a landscape I know pretty well. I grow up just a few hundred miles south of here, and my family often went north past here to the boreal forest of bogs, lakes and pines, the closest really good “nature” to the kingdom of central Illinois. It’s a wonderful transition zone of grasslands, marshes, uplands prairies and open softwood forests. It’s a mix I enjoy painting, because there are few broad-leaved trees. South from here you leave the pines behind and get into all those broadleafed oaks and open prairies -which means TOO many leaves and TOO many blades of grass to paint.

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.

New Painting Post

New Mural – Exploring the Nearshore

Nearshore of the Elwha River

For the past few months I’ve been working on some projects centering around the dam removals on the Olympic Peninsula’s Elwha River – located about an hour west of here. This painting has just been finished, so I thought I’d pass it around. You and the clients are both seeing it for the first time! It shows the shoreline, Olympic National Park behind, the Elwha River delta on the right – and of course the critters and plants that call this place home.

This is a collaboration between Olympic National Park and Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles, just to the east of where this scene is. One of the big beneficiaries of freeing the Elwha will be the unrestricted flow of nutrients, sediments and drift material from the river into the ocean and then along this shoreline. The river has been blocked for almost a century and this beach is pretty starved, not only because of the dams but also because the shore is ‘armored’ with boulders (read: very bad for critters). In this scene, I’ve hopefully given you an idea of how dynamic and complex this place should be. The painting is destined for the Feiro Center, along with other panels that will tell the story of this, the largest dam removal project in our history. I’m pleased and proud to be part of this forward-thinking environmental project.

These big paintings are always fun for me. I just never get tired of figuring out how to somehow ‘build’ all these 3-D plants and critters into a somewhat realistic and complex world of only two dimensions. It’s a real puzzle. If I continued working on this painting, it would become a very tight and almost photographic work, but I’ve always thought they should be more an “impression” of a scene, and so I try to paint them that way – in an impressionistic style. While it might look realistic on your screen, it’s actually fairly loose in technique.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to. If you know others that might enjoy my musings, they can sign up on the blog page – or by sending me an email.

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.