Tag Archives: Olympic

New Painting Post, Uncategorized

Backwater on the Hoh

We’ve spent the better part of two weeks camping along Olympic National Park’s Hoh River, and I have a bunch of fun mixed media paintings to report. We’re home now, watering some very thirsty tomatoes, yanking out the gone-to-seed stuff we forgot about – and trying to figure out how to return to the West End for a few days more. Probably won’t happen soon, because there are some very patient people waiting for us to do our art-tricks – and we thank you. What? This little watercolor and ink created on my lap in the camp chair while I was being eaten alive by the moskies isn’t art-trick enough? Well, the spash of paint followed up by a dead run to the camper was a pretty good trick. “Moskies” was what I heard a Brit call the evil Hoh River mosquitoes. Pretty good name.

This ORIGINAL painting is watercolor and ink on paper , 8″ x 10″ and $140 unframed.
The dark mahogany frame with a double mat and glass 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 if you’re interested.

AND……………..

 

Here’s a friend that came by the campsite to visit one evening. We’ve not seen such a perfect bull elk  up close and personal in years. Had to have been 1200 lbs and not a mark on him. I guessed from ground to antler top was at least 8.5 feet, and you sure didn’t want to stand in his way as he came past. At the closest point he was about 15′ from us, and the tree I was hiding behind seemed pretty darned small. Olympic NP has the largest unmanaged elk herd in the country, and this guy truly seemed ‘unmanaged.’ Whooie.

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, Uncategorized

Twilight on the Hoh River

We’ve been camping along Olympic National Park’s famous Hoh River this past week, and the next few  posts will be watercolors I did out there, mostly after hikes in the late afternoon. I could have spent the time soaking my feet in the 49-degree water coming straight off the Blue Glacier, but thought better of it. It’s an amazing valley, that quintessential Rain Forest Experience, surrounded by miles of giant 250′ Sitka spruce, red-cedar and hemlock. The visitors are all pretty civilized there too. It’s as if they realize they’re in a special, almost sacred place, and treat it (and other visitors) that way. There’s a lack of amenities, to be sure, no water in the restrooms, no power, no showers, and the park store seems to always be out of our puzzles and books – but it’s also pure clean ancient forest an hour drive from the nearest stoplight. Wonderful.

And speaking of the nearest stoplight, that would be in Forks – the little bedraggled West End logging town that has fallen into a Hollywood gold mine. They should make Stephenie Meyers, or maybe Hollywood location people, the patron saints of Forks for their gift of filming the Twilight Series there. We delight driving through it nowadays, seeing every store in business and the town full of vampire-seekers (or maybe vampires themselves). I’ve never seen so many dark haired, pale makeuped teenaged girls with cameras in my life. Stores: there’s ‘Dazzled by Twilight’, and ‘Twilight Natives’, and even ‘Twilight Firewood.’ We saw a rows of girls all lined up in front of the closed-up high school, pulled over waiting their turn in front of the town sign, even photographing the Twilight Gas Station sign. Amazing!

So, here’s my Twilight take on it with this little watercolor of the Twilight on the Hoh River. Nancy says I’m trying to cash in on the Twilight Craze, but I know who has all the money – pale-skinned teenage girls, and I just know one of them will buy this. Oh, no vampires in it? Well, you never know. There could be one lerking behind one of those big spruce.

This watercolor and ink painting is on cold-press paper, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
A nice mahogany frame with a double mat and glass 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.

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.

Next time I’ll tell you about the “One Square Inch of Silence” 3.5 miles up the trail on the Hoh.

Uncategorized

“Vanna White” – 20 Years Remembered

Painted just last year, my two best friends, “Vanna White” and Nancy in an interpretive painting for Olympic National Park. For decades to come, visitors will see but not fully understand what this painting represents to us.

I’m greaving  today over a separation from my second best friend, “Vanna White”. For 20 years and a third of a million miles, as a research vehicle I’ve driven this VW Westfalia Camper to just about every park in the Western United States. We’ve camped in her in places you wouldn’t think a 2-wheeled car could go,  talked to her like a person, and some people thought I would be buried in her – a ready-made coffin! 

One favorite story is the burned-up water pump-event north of Bakersfield. We got her stopped before the engine blew up, and were hauled into town by a good-hearted Chicano tow operator. Saturday night, all shops were closed (and there’s almost no civilized camping in Bakerfield), so he took us over to a friend’s house for the night, where we slept in the driveway in a neighborhood filled with Spanish-speaking kids and dogs. Early morning, our new friend found a pump somewhere and had it in by nightfall –  and event that included tasty food being brought over by the neighbors. I remember lots of fried chicken and lots of kids, all very interested in who we were and what we did. Vanna was like that – drawing a crowd no matter where we landed.

Now, while my Dad would buy a new car every three years no matter what, we camped more times than I can count in Vanna during the past 7,300 days, from Mexican beaches to Banff in the Canadian Rockies. I wrote park guides in her, painted watercolors on picnic tables and woke up with snow on the roof.  Burning through 17,000 gallons of gas, most parts were replaced as we went along. Cosmetic surgery and new paint (by me – after all, I am an artist and own a spray rig), but also a new engine, transmission, three clutches, four or five water pumps, three stereos and more carpets than I can remember. And, like another Vanna White we all have known for decades, she just never seemed to age!

2006: Here’s Vanna next to a 90′ mural we were working on in 29 Palms California. We painted two murals here, a decade apart, and Vanna was there both times.

And so, after driving her a distance of from here to the Moon and half way back, we recently decided to find her a new home. It didn’t take long!  Just a couple of days on Craigs List and yesterday Vanna went off to Portland with a delightful younger couple who, we’re sure, will have the time of their lives continuing on with this same boundless spirit of adventure. AND, I’ve been told of a local support group I can go to of former Westfalia owners.

And why did we do this heart-wrenching thing? Well, we now have a little Scamp trailer waiting for us in the Tampa area. That’ll be a 6,600 mile trip to bring her home – and a good start on the next 340,000-mile adventure!

Vanna on her last adventure with us. California’s Anza Borrego Desert State Park, December 2009.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

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

Salmon Cascades – Olympic National Park

Salmon-Cascades
I spent the entire week drawing concept sketches for a new project, and I couldn’t have imagined a more fun time. And since I have graphite all over the place –  drawings for 130 running FEET of new murals and am completely disorganized, I thought I’d just post this finished painting here instead of showing you the sketches. Maybe it’ll calm me down. When I get the pencil drawings pasted together in some sort of publishable form, I’ll post them.
This painting is of Salmon Cascades – just west of us in Olympic National Park. It’s a favorite for many locals, because in Fall huge salmon come right up along the rock cliff on the left as the big fish prepare to jump the cascades. You can be within two feet of a very powerful fish waiting for just the right moment to make the leap, and it’s pretty thrilling. In late afternoon, the sun comes around to illuminate the mist from the falls, bathing the entire area in silver light.
This painting is acrylic on board, 12″ x 20″ and we’re offering it for $700 unframed. Email us for details. Click the image to enlarge.
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.

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Murals

Welcome to Sol Duc Valley

Since this wayside panel is being printed this month, I thought I’d pass it on here. I published another one of these back on November 8th, and you can see it here. For this project, I painted 21 paintings for 3 panels at Olympic National Park’s Sol Duc Valley entry kiosk. With the others last year, that makes 24 images you can see while driving the 17 miles from national park gate to road’s end where a trail leads to this grand waterfall – Sol Duc Falls. At 4′ x 6′, these are pretty large panels.

So what? Well, I like to call these efforts “public art galleries in our parks”, and I now have hundreds of these things in parks, preserves and wildlife refuges around the West. You’re hiking or driving along, and suddenly there’s a piece of art and a small story to tell you, or interpret, what you’re seeing. It’s just a great way to experience a beautiful place, and, I hope, to heighten your experience beyond what nature is providing (if that’s possible). These panels don’t use the original art itself, but are always fabricated out of fiberglass, stainless steel or a Formica product, so they’ll probably last longer than I will. I’d like to image someone coming along decades from now and stumbling over one of these things – and having it enhance their day.

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 group – or just ‘talk’ with us.

New Painting Post

First Serious Snow – Olympics

Click the image to see a larger version.

Boy, we’ve had some weather lately. Going into town yesterday, the eastern Olympics showed their best with fresh snow. Strong westerly winds were blowing it off Mount Townsend in great banners, and the clouds were alive. Mile-high Hurricane Ridge was supposed to have gotten 18″, and you can see this for yourselves here at the park web cam mounted on the visitor center roof. The camera lens is currently 90% plastered with snow and you could barely see anything. At night, even on a cloudy evening, you can still see the unearthly glow of the snow, but seeing it on a normal clear day (without the snow on the lens), the view of Mt. Olympus is stunning. The little thumbnail next to the web cam is what you’d see in the summer. This is only about 45 air miles from here and we go there often. And with the web cam, now so can you. Check back to see it ‘unclogged’.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $420 unframed.
The gold frame makes it a total of $445 and shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone or if you take the frame. This is the original, NOT a print.
Email us for details. Sorry, this painting is sold.

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

Thanks for reading this time.
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.

You can also leave comments on the blog here. Every little bit helps me understand how to be a better painter.

New Painting Post

Snow Creek Estuary

Happiest Halloween, Everyone. Tonight we helped hand out 40lbs of candy in downtown Port Townsend at Gallery Nine. 40lbs from our gallery times about 40 stores is a LOT of sugar! It was a wonderful home-time event for a bunch of very cool kids from towns as far as an hour away. My favorite was the H1N1 pig costume.

This week I was supposed to have the bristlecone mural all finished up and ready to show you – but other life got in the way, including new keel bolts for the boat and a maybe never-ending exhibit project now almost in its fourteenth month. But who’s complaining. Both those diversions were artistic in their own ways. The keel bolts kept that 70-yr old boat from sinking in the slip, so you could call it art-rehab.

I did, however, find some time to do this little acrylic of Snow Creek Estuary. (click on it to enlarge. If not, click here.) This place is very close to our studio, right here on the ‘back’ side of our local Quimper Peninsula. Snow Creek comes down from the eastern Olympics and drains into Discovery Bay, the site of George Vancouver’s first anchorage here-abouts in 1792. Few live here, and it still has a pretty healthy run of chum salmon. It was from here that ‘our’ Chimacum Creek got a hatch box full of these genetically-similar salmon eggs about a decade ago. Nature worked her wonders, and now there are over 1000 chum salmon that come home to Chimicum to spawn each fall, right below out house.

Just at dusk a few weeks ago, we stopped here for Nancy to do some photography, and while out in the meadows, we discovered a giant population of garden spiders, all sitting patiently in their webs for some insect action. These are some serious spiders, so we backtracked gingerly the way we had come. We felt we had intruded into their world – which we had.

And now, back to the studio and the bristlecones of the Great Basin.

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, 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

This week I also remodeled the Interpretive Section of larryeifert.com and added some new projects.

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.

You can also leave comments on the blog here. Every little bit helps me understand how to be a better painter.

New Painting Post

Late Afternoon – Lillian Ridge Trail

Lillian-Ridge

SOLD
Obstruction Point area, Olympic National Park.
Acrylic on linen canvas – a small easel painting this time.

This trail is a favorite – I can’t paint it enough. It’s about 35 miles, as the eagle flies, west of our studio in the eastern Olympic Mountains – a serious set of rocks. I painted another version this last spring and posted it here in March. It’s not the amazing scenery or that it’s an almost level trail (well, that might be part of it), but it’s also the fact that, at over 6000′, it’s above any glaciation that’s ever occurred there. To walk here is to trod on the exact same stones and sit on the very same overlook that the mammoth hunters did during the last Ice Age. The shattered shale that crunches under my boots is unchanged, and I could very probably be the very NEXT person since that Pliocene hunter to sit on that rock and look for Olympic marmots, those alpine animals that are only found here. The only difference might be that it would have been the hunter’s dinner and not mine.

For an artist that wishes nature were a bit less mild these days, that wishes he were born a few years earlier so he could have seen more of our now-vanished legacy, this is heady stuff.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 9″ x 12″ and $140 unframed.
The gold frame makes it a total of $170 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.

Still working on the bristlecone painting, but painting in the boatyard (our boat) has gotten in the way.

Thanks for reading this week. For new readers, I try to alternate between park interpretive stuff and easel paintings, but they’re all about nature. It’s what I’ve done for over 40 years.

Larry Eifert

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

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

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

You can also leave comments on the blog here. Every little bit helps me understand how to be a better painter.

***previous*** — ***next***

New Painting Post

Elwha River at the old Humes Ranch

I’ve painted two large murals of the Elwha River for Olympic National Park, and so in the interest of science, art and fun, of course we had to hike up the river to check it out. We’ve backpacked up this valley several times in the last two seasons. The Humes Ranch area is only a few miles from the trailhead, but its scenic beauty would be worth miles more. As someone said, this is a big messy river, with snags and piles of old-growth trees strewn along its shores. We’ve camped here several times, right on the grassy knoll above the rocks here, taking in the vastness of this place as the sun sets behind the peaks. This is what Western National Parks are all about, experiencing wildness that used to be taken for granted, but isn’t any more.

Oh, and Humes Ranch used to be here prior to the park’s creation. In fact, the oldest building in the park, the old ranch house, was just restored just up the slope. The only livestock left today are the bears, deer and elk.

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, 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, Wildlife

American Fishers return to Olympic National Park and make whoopy!

Our web host has been messing with our shopping cart this last week. You’d think a company the size of France could figure this out, but not these days. And, I admit it, painted this image last year, but I just had to put a blog entry about it now because the Olympic Peninsula recently got a bit more crowded.

Fishers had been extinct on the Olympic Peninsula for decades, having been trapped out of the entire state of Washington for their plush fir. Last year, Olympic National Park commissioned this painting to coincide with the release of the first groups of fishers seen around here in 80 years, animals the Park resource people brought down from Vancouver Island. The painting was used for a bunch of interpretation, educating everyone about the event. It was fun to attempt to paint something I knew little about. This house cat-sized critter is between 2 and 4 feet in length including a giant tail. All four feet have five toes with retractable claws, and because they can rotate their hind paws 180 degrees, they can grasp limbs and climb down trees head first. So, unlike similar martens or weasels, this allows them to hunt birds in trees.

Disregard the arrow! It was a proofing issue.

So, it’s one thing to reintroduce animals into the wild, but it’s another to keep them there. It appears to be happening. The park set up an automatic camera in the backcountry near a female fisher’s den in the Elwha Valley. It showed the mother taking four babies, known as kits, out of the den, which is located fairly high up in a rotting snag. The animal appears to be moving her young to a new den, presumably closer to the ground so the kits won’t have far to fall as they grow.

I really hope that in a few years there might be fishers all over the Olympic Peninsula, maybe even passing through my backyard (but that’s a stretch).

Currently you’ll have to email if you want something, but we now have museum-quality prints available of the fisher painting available here of three sizes for between $39.95 matted and $239.95 fully framed.

Or, you can go to our Giclee Print Index here

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