Tag Archives: Wildlife

New Painting Post

Dipper on the North Fork Returns

North-Fork-Dipper
  • This is not a new painting, but this week we sold a large custom print of it. The painting itself is in our private collection, just because I liked it, and now I think I like it even more.  There’s a quality about the river’s transparency, of water-carved rocks glowing from within – and that reflected glow on the dipper. OR, maybe I like it because of the memory of the moment. That’s important now as spring slowly arrives here and I wish for warmer hiking days. We have 6″ high nettles up in our woods, daffs higher than that, the willows are out – and it surely is an early spring, but not earlier enough for us.
  • That moment: North Fork of the Sol Duc River in Olympic National Park. Hike up and over a little ridge, ford the river up to your crotch in blindingly-cold ice melt – and you’re on a truly glorious and empty trail for miles. In places there are huge water-carved boulders (where we saw this dipper dipping), and in August it’s a grand place for skinny dipping for sure. Thanks, Kevin, for buying the print so these memories could return.
  • I think this is why I’m just a painter of life’s memories. I can paint pretty good non-objective images and commissioned fictitious murals of some detail, but when I look back at all the paintings through the years, I get the best emotional charge from painting experiences from the times (good or bad) in my life. I think of the moment, the experience surrounding that moment, who I was with, what it smelled like, felt like, sounded like.

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 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

It’s a wrap – Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone

Prismatic-Hot-Springs

  • This week I finished up this new mural about Yellowstone Climate Change. I’m happy with it – or at least as happy as I ever get at this stage of working on something for a month and never truly knowing how it’s going to end. This painting and the last Yellowstone mural about whitebark pines (finished last month and seen here), were both funded by the Crater Lake Foundation. I know it seems odd to have someone at Crater Lake fund two Yellowstone paintings, but there’s more to this. First is that this painting is the 12th big painting I’ve done for them, and it’s part of a broad scheme for the funders to create an art collection reflecting various ecosystems and habitats centered around western pines. Whitebarks, bristlecones and now the lodgepoles in this one, are all threatened by Climate Change, and using art to educate is what I’m all about – so I’m thrilled to be able to contribute to this.
  • And, once again, here is the original sketch so you can see how it evolved for the concept. And, once again here’s the story. Lodgepole pines are built to handle wildfire. Their cones won’t even open unless their heated. But today’s hotter summers, warmer winters and less snow mean many more pine bark beetles are surviving cold winters and killing millions of these trees.
  • This painting is meant to show the Yellowstone ecosystem, its wildlife and how the forests are being battered into something almost unfit for wildlife to live in. It’s a trick to paint destruction and yet show it as beauty, and yet as musician Jack Johnson says in this Climate Change YouTube video (please take a minute and watch it), we don’t have to think of this as an end point, just change we need to somehow learn how to handle – and leave this beautiful world in a better place than when we arrived in it.
Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

Thanks for reading this week. Pass the video on – I thought it was very good.
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

Dungeness Crabs – My 48-North story for January

2014-1-Dungeness-Crabs

Holiday Fresh Dungeness Crab Eating: it’s like a holiday itself and we’ve been doing a lot of it lately. So, besides the crabs, I cooked up a story about them for my monthly page in 48-North magazine that just hit the stores this week. What a lot of work being a crab!

Each year, over a million pounds of Dungeness crab is caught and consumed here in the Salish Sea. Most everyone knows how to catch, cook and eat this tasty crustacean – we use the third and fourth feet for the meat picks – no metal, please. Yet few know the details of a crab’s life – so here goes. They were named after Dungeness, Washington near Sequim on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula, where the first Northwest commercial crab fishery began. Like most creatures with external skeletons, they must shed their hard shells as they grow larger. By carefully backing out of their shells, they moult between May and August, and mating occurs immediately afterwards before the new exoskeleton hardens on the females. This happens when the male begins a physical embrace with the female that lasts for days. With the female tucked underneath the male and oriented so that their abdomens touch, heads facing each other, the ‘love-making’ begins. Try to picture this. I’ll bet you can’t and not smile.

Ah, but life goes on, and several months later the female ‘lays’ her eggs, possibly up to 2.5 million of them. Completely helpless, they remain attached under her abdomen for 3 to 5 more months until they hatch. Then the free-swimming young crabs go through 5 larval stages and about 10 molts over the next 2 years. Male Dungeness crabs reach legal catch size at 3 or 4 years of age, at which time they weight 2 or 3 pounds. They may live for 13 years.

Thanks for reading this week, and Happy New Year. May it be better than the last one. 2013 – RIP.
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

Grand Prismatic Hotspring – Yellowstone progress

Hot-Springs-4

There’s progress on the current painting, Christmas festivities or not. We had a cold spell – at least cold for Northwestern Washington and it got down into the 20’s, even high teens at night. For the first time ever, Nancy told me to move the easel and painting stuff into the house where it’s a bit more climate-controlled. Nice! Now it’s back to normal temps, but I’m still here, painting right beside one of the big east-facing windows and not really wanting to go back to the studio yet. So, here’s the progress in a week, and considering Christmas and all, I think it’s going well. Should be finished by next week.

 

This is last week: I blogged about it here.

 

Progress-2

And here’s the sketch a few weeks before:

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

AND, right out side the window next to where I’m painting, our neighborhood barred owl hangs out during the day. He waits patiently for one of the squirrels or towhees to make a wrong move, but so far, SO FAR, we’ve not seen him get anything. Nancy went out with her camera and got within about 15 feet when he regurgitated a big owl pellet – so he must be catching something. Either way, I’ve been greatly enjoying this closeness to nature – as I paint nature. He stares at me like he knows how to do this Yellowstone-thing better. Maybe he does! (photo by Nancy Cherry Eifert)

Backyard bared owl

Thanks for reading this week. This may be the last post for 2013 and we both just want to thank you for all the support everyone’s given us this time around the sun. This year makes it something like the 45th year I’ve made a living by making art about nature.
Larry and Nancy Cherry 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

Yellowstone Lodgepole Forests in Peril

Progress-2

A second Yellowstone Climate Change painting is evolving on my easel now. The last mural a few weeks ago was about the high elevation whitebark pine forests there and the mass die-off that threatens an entire ecosystem. This one is about the lodgepole pine forests and how Climate Change is threatening that natural community. The center of interest is the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, biggest hot spring in America. How will Climate Change effect this? Low water levels in summer may possibly turn it into a giant dry brown hole. Broken, burned and dead lodgepole pine forests are happening everywhere in the West, but the giant fires a few years ago in Yellowstone showed something was seriously amiss. As Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior stated: “The entire West is one giant tinderbox waiting to go off!” So, I’m trying to show all this with art. Not easy, but definitely worthwhile if I can pull it off.

Progress-1

And here’s the initial laying in of the concept with paint. Distant background is beginning to take shape.

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

And here’s the original sketch. I blogged about it before here.

Next week, Christmas or not, I’ll be closing in on finishing (I hope). Happy Holidays to everyone and thanks for helping two artists make a living at what they both love. It wasn’t the best year for us, thanks to the Sequester and Shutdown, but we’re still alive and kicking – and looking forward to a better one coming up.

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 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

Yellowstone Whitebarks – Closing In

Progress-5

I’m closing in on completion of this current project, Whitebark Pines of Yellowstone. You can see the progress over the past few weeks here in other posts. Hey, this painting has it all: charismatic mega fauna including that emblem of Yellowstone, the griz, giant mountains, hot springs, wolverine, elk, wolves and even a lynx. All those I rarely get to plop into one painting, so it’s been a treat. Still working on the grouse, aspens and a bunch of details, so stay tuned for the next round within a week (because I have another one charging right behind).

    As I wrote before, this painting is supposed to illustrate the Climate Change disaster that’s occurring in Yellowstone. Bark beetles, blister rust, warmer winters with less snow, drier summers and lots of other factors are creating real havoc in this amazing place. Most of the critters and trees in this painting will probably end up missing from this great park – and I’m not at all happy to say it was us, all of us, that did this.

    But for now, I’ll finish the painting right after I go get some gas for the car.

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 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

COOTS!

2013-12-Coots

At the request of my editor, here’s my 48 North magazine story on the American Coot for December 2013. It’s a tad bit early, but I liked the illustrations enough to show it off. Everyone thinks coots are just gray and black, but a closer look in the sun and you’ll see all sorts of colors. They’re odd little birds, as the story and illustration explains. Click on it and you’ll see a bigger version in your browser. I’m not kidding about the amazing color of those chicks!

    Climate Change: If you’ve read this stuff before, you’ll know I’ve been working on two large paintings about Climate Change and how it’s effecting Yellowstone. Today I spotted a couple of dozen purple violets in bloom in the yard here in Port Townsend – just as a hummingbird dive-bombed me. Now, it’s been unseasonably clear here and getting down below freezing at night because of it – and now here are these violets! Hummmm. Here I was complaining about the chilly nights. With hummingbirds and violets, what could I possibly have to complain about anything. Life is good!

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 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

A New Badlands National Park Puzzle

Eifert-Badlands-puzzle

    Looking for some comments here. This is a new design for one of our favorite 500-piece jigsaw puzzles, and used to be called ‘The Vanishing Prairie’. Time to spice it up a bit, so here’s the new version coming out in spring of 2014. If you have the time and are fans of our puzzles, I’d love some feedback. Some of you guys have bought dozens of them.

     I began counting up the number of these things we’ve done. It’s been over 20 years now since we stopped focusing on posters and moved our interpretive products more into jigsaw puzzles. It seems there’s more actual usage of the art than just hanging a poster on the wall. It all started back in about 1990 when a German company bought three images I had previously painted for Yosemite and (I think) Crater Lake. Over the years, that number has grown to between 70 and 75. That’s a LOT of puzzles. Other companies have bought the rights to use the images, but I still prefer to mess around with the designs myself. It’s like building a stage set, with lots of layers and story-telling. This one has 34 layers, and never mind the box front and back – that’s just the puzzle. There’s another new one coming out in spring for Crater Lake that has a lesson plan inside – more layers!

Anyway: what do you think? Seems like this will be a fun time finding all these little extra critters, but I don’t know. You see, I’m almost ashamed to say I’ve never put one of them together!

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 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

Yellowstone Climate Change mural #2

Hot-Spring-sketch-vs1

This enlarges in your browser so you can see details.

Midway Geyser Basin and the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, Yellowstone National Park

This is a second and very different sketch than the one posted two weeks ago.

    There are still critters to add, bison crossing near the hot spring, a few birds and maybe a bat, but it’s essentially complete. The idea for this one developed as a visual counter-punch to the first sketch I drew two weeks ago of Whitebark Pines at Yellowstone. That one shows high-elevation Climate Change effects to the park, while this sketch shows thermal features and lodgepole pine forests (where most visitors go).  Both show all the critters and plants that will be effected by Climate Change, change that is already seriously in progress.

    Below is one of my reference photos of the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, largest hot spring in America. The sketch shows a burned-out forest and lots of diseased trees caused by warmer winters. Warmer winters allow pine bark beetles and then blister rust to ravage these forests. Warmer and drier summers then mean bigger wild fires, a possible lowering of the summer water table – and many changes in wildlife populations. Stay tuned, the first painting is already underway. These two are funded by the Crater Lake Institute, but more like them are being planned through the National Park Service Climate Change Response Program. It’s a bold series of paintings I’m thrilled to be involved with.

Grand_Prismatic_Spring_and_Midway_Geyser_Basin_Yellowstone_NP

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 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

American Dipper 5

Dipper-5-8x10

    American Dipper 5 is a new original painting, acrylic on board, 8″ x 10″ and $140 unframed. This is another in my on-going search for the perfect dipper waterfall.

A custom 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. I can send a photo of the frames we have available.

       And then there’s this: We spent the last couple of weeks working around the eastern Cascades near Leavenworth, Washington and day-hiking below the Enchantments. Amazing giant mountains, warm days and fall colors at their peak. Nancy gained some very tasty images for an up-coming show – and I found new material for more dipper paintings.

Nancy-up-Snow-Lake-trail

 

     Here’s Nancy hiking almost straight up on Snow Lakes Trail above Icicle Creek – ALL the trails are straight up! Hiking into the light reminded me that, for us, this is as close to realizing the divine as we know. For Nancy and me, pristine wilderness, land unaffected by humans is religious, a medicine and tonic for the soul. It’s important to us in many ways, but mostly it serves as the realization that this will be here long after we’re gone. In a way, it’s a sense of immortality.

    We trailer camped in an almost-closed up KOA right in town, and Harry the Cat had a rather amazing experience one day. He had not the foggiest idea what these American turkeys were, but actually seemed like he wanted to become friends with them – even came out and rolled around on the ground in front of them. Any one of them could have laid him low, but I guess I’m happy to report that we’ve raised a ‘soft’ cat with some sense of morality – if not mortality. 

Harry-and-Turkeys

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 beautiful photographs

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