Tag Archives: Wildlife

New Painting Post

October’s Story for 48 North Magazine

2013-10-Turnstones

Click the page to enlarge it in your browser for easier reading.

Shutdown, day 11! While the Park Service may be shut down and leaving us with a bleeding business – and sales and commissions are looking to like someone run over by a tank – and we may be unable to go to parks for research or even get it from the web because all park websites are down (and it’s a bunch, let me tell you), or, for that matter, even go camping for a couple of days and enjoy OUR own parks in OUR country – life goes on. (that’s a bad sentence, I know, but one I’m leaving because it represents some big frustrations) So, here’s my story for 48 North magazine for October about some little birds that just want to be able to exist in a safe and secure place, carry on normal life and be safe. Sounds like us!

PLEASE, ALLOW ME A RANT: I know I’m preaching to the choir here, and probably HALF my readers get this on computers that are currently turned off or even available to be turned on, but I just want to say I’ve appreciated every minute of trying to make an honest living painting nature in national parks. A lot of that has to do with the scenery and our heritage, but even more has to do with the fabulous people we’ve met over the years who work for the government. They’re not all bureaucrats, but scientists, naturalists, people trying to spend their lives making a difference in a good way – and currently they’re draining their savings accounts to pay the bills. Yesterday, Day 10, it was announced that parks and their local communities have lost $750 million dollars in lost revenue THIS WEEK, money that will never be regained or back-paid, and most are in some pretty remote communities that need it.

It seems lost on people who support the Tea Party that Congress’ job is to pass laws that then require spending money, and shutting down government and not paying the bills it already rang up is ludicrous – like buying a car and then refusing to pay for it. I urge everyone to not forget about all this when it comes time to vote the next time!

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

Chickadee In The Soloman-seal

Chickadee-and-Soloman-11x14

We have new chickadees on the feeder these days, spring chicks that are now flocking as one big family. Chestnut-backed and black-capped, two species that all seem to live together easily. Seemed they needed documentation. Then I saw a false soloman-seal on a trail the other day that had berries, beaten up fall leaves – and I put the two into one painting. The soloman-seal has had its day and is almost ready for winter, foliage waning, berries awaiting some critter’s help in dispersal – the chickadees are young and full of it, dispersing themselves with great gusto.

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on birch board, 11″ x 14″ and $145 unframed. Click the image to see an enlarged version.
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.

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

The Gulls at Ruby Beach

Gulls-at-Ruby-Beach

“The Gulls at Ruby Beach” is a new acrylic painting on canvas, 20″ x 40″ and offered here for $1750 framed. Email us for details if you’re interested. Click it and you’ll see enlarged versions of both these images.

  Ruby Beach is usually a vibrant and wild Olympic National Park beach, but on occasion in late summer the ocean can be more like a calm lake – little surf and almost no wind. We were there to see a sunset and it felt like this. It felt like warm coffee. The headlands beyond the beach aren’t quiet as close as what I painted, but it just seemed like I needed to stack up the levels of receding shorelines and show some abstract textures to that area. And maybe some of you will notice the big missing sea stack on the left side. No, not on purpose, but if you stand just here on the trail down to the beach, that big rock is more to the left and out of view. I think it works.

Gulls-at-Ruby-Beach-framed

 

Here’s a photo of the painting and frame that’s included. If you don’t want the custom frame, we can do that too. This is the original painting, NOT a print.

And, if you’re interested, you might go over to my Facebook Fan page and like it. I post lots of trail albums and other art there. See the link below.

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 4

Dipper-4

This ORIGINAL painting is  acrylic on linen canvas, 16″ x 20″ and $190 unframed.
This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

    Long ago, I saw some paintings of a South American rain forest. I have no idea who the artist was, but they were moody, dark, ethereal – and had this ‘feeling’ about them that a painter can only get if they’d actually been to a place like that. And it’s not just going there, but they would have to really get to know a place, not just how it looks, but WHY it looks the way it does.

    I think that way about this painting. If just feels like it really was. We’ve spent a spring and summer doing a lot of hiking, more than normal, and much of it has been beside these pure, ethereal and pristine Northwest rivers that are unlike any others I know. The water is often blue-gray because of ice melt far upstream, streamside moss and salmonberries are sculptured gardens of lush green and fresh life – never dusty and tired-looking. And that little dipper. It just keeps reappearing in these paintings, over and over, the symbol of wilderness and these Northwest waters.

    Last week Nancy and I backpacked into Royal Basin in the Olympics – the epitome of these types of landscapes. For over six miles we hiked beside the Dungeness River, then Royal Creek, never out of earshot of its roaring and rumbling as it dropped through the canyon. We broke the climb up into two sections and camped so near the creek that all night I thought I heard voices – well, I guess I did if you consider rushing water to have a voice. The river-talkers were almost too loud at times.

River-camp

Towards the top, Royal Lake appeared, encircled by some of the highest peaks in the Olympics – and we were the only ones camping here. Somehow, this dipper painting needed to be posted afterwards. So I did!

Royal-Lake-and-Mt-Fricaba

Thanks for reading this week. There’s an album of these trip hikes on my Facebook fan page.
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 Fantastic Finish for Sitka

Sitka-estuary-painting-vs2

Last week I finished up my painting for Sitka National Historical Park in Alaska.  I think it hits the mark pretty well. I was tasked with showing the relationships between spawning pink salmon and the forest around Indian River, right in the town of Sitka. The park actually surrounds this Estuary. Essentially it’s the story of how the returning fish feed the local critters and even the trees themselves. See the American Marten running deeper into the forest with a fish? The dipper with an egg in its mouth, a brown bear catching the salmon, or eagles and ravens doing the same? I thought it pretty great that this coincided with our local “pink” salmon stream, the Dungeness River that is having a huge spawning run right now too – over 100,000 fish and still counting.

Indian-River-Panel

And here’s the finished installation (or at least a design mockup from Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia). It’s not approved yet, but well on the way. I left the web version large, so click the image so you can see the text and other details. This will eventually be installed along the trail in the exact location as what the painting shows. At 42″ wide, it will be a pretty large panel, almost as big as the original painting.

This installation is a great example of why I just love my job. This will be there for many years, teaching visitors about this special place by using art in an outdoor location – right at the point of contact with nature itself. My mom taught people about nature, but she did it with her books, photography and outdoor classes. I’m just doing the same thing in another way, with paintings – and I hope it never ends.

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 Sea-run Humpy for Sitka

No post last week – just too busy. But this just came off the easel today and will be sent out tomorrow for approval, so let’s get your approval as well.

This is going to Sitka National Historical Park in Alaska. My task here was to paint the ocean form of the humpbacked or pink salmon in a realistic way so it looks like it’s the real deal. I also painted the eggs, alevin and fry in the same manner, but I’ll post those later. This one seemed to have gotten that pretty well. There was some debate about the shine. If it’s out of the water, it would shine, but in the water this fish wouldn’t shine anywhere. In fact, they look pretty dull and camouflaged, and needs to be or it would be a seal’s meal. After I scanned it and looked at the reference photos (about 25 of them), I thought that the fish might need to be more reddish since my scanner is always on the cool side. So Photoshop did that, and now I’m not sure.

So here’s that second version with the red.

Sea-run-pink-salmon

Art is always like that. There’s no THERE there. You never know when it’s finished, or if it’s ‘right’, since there is no ‘right’ – just someone else’s opinion. Years ago, in the Eifert Gallery in California, a woman came in and went right around the main exhibit hall.  I happened to be upstairs on the mezzanine and overheard her comment as she went around the room: “Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong” she declared in a voice that I thought was louder than necessary. It was a teachable moment for me, because I realized my confidence had grown and I was solidly in command of my feelings, and what did she know – nothing more than I did, and probably less.

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

Progress Pix for my Sitka Alaska Painting

Progress shown here in reverse. This is the most current version as of Friday, August 2, 2013. Trees are more refined, details emerging on the shoreline, devils club and meadow, water reflections beginning, some details with the Marten are beginning – and the dipper appears along with some salmon.  As I paint this, I can almost feel myself remembering our trip there, standing on this same shore and how it felt and smelled.

Defining broad areas with texture takes time.

Last week before I had National Park Service approval to proceed, I spent time blocking out color and background, which is stuff that almost never gets changed. This painting is about four feet wide – not a big one for me, but big enough to get some detail going.

And here’s the second version of the sketch I posted two weeks ago. The entire lower half was enlarged by about 15% with the bear, deer, harlequin ducks and some other stuff moved around to fit better.  The lower part was enlarged to show off the critters that tell the story of how the salmon return home to spawn, die and are subsequently eaten by local birds and animals that, in turn, provide nutrients to the forest. I had to provide (prove) that the foreground critters were sized correctly in relationship to each other, so the Raven = 24″, Dipper = 7.5″, Marten = 19-27″, which in my view is about correct.  Am I getting there?

 

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

Swivel-toes – My Story for July, 2013

If you click the story, it will enlarge for better reading in your browser.

 

 Gee.. July’s almost over and I almost forgot to post my 48-North magazine story for this month – and they already have August ‘in the can.’ Just too much summer in not enough months, doesn’t everyone agree? I was sailing out in Port Townsend Bay a bit ago and saw an osprey dive on a fish. Poetry in motion – a fisherman with perfection. It was truly thrilling to watch. So I cooked up a little story about that bird and the osprey’s amazing ability to successfully land it’s catch on nine out of ten dives. So successful I thought – until some years ago I saw a jealous eagle dive-bomb an osprey in Banff National Park and forced it to release its catch in mid-air, which the eagle then caught on the way down. And they say eagles aren’t as good at fishing as ospreys, but they’re sure better at being bullies.

 

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.

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

New Painting Post

Sitka National Historical Park Mural Sketch

 Here’s my sketch for the biggest of six paintings for Sitka National Historical Park. I’m now awaiting approval or change requests to begin painting – oh boy. I loaded a big 16″ version of this on the web, so just click the drawing to see it.

There are some areas that still need figuring out. The right side needs defining better, harlequin ducks are too big, the upper left (spruce forest). The overall concept is probably Okay, but I won’t know until the National Park Service releases comments (which they’re very good at).

And here’s one of my reference photos of the location to show how I arrived at the sketch. This is the story I’m trying to tell: pink or humpy salmon come into the Indian River to spawn and then die. Bears, eagles, ravens, martens and more come in to get the fish; some are dragged or flown off into the forest to be eaten – and the remains leach into the soil feeding the trees. It’s some of the only nitrogen these trees get, and a healthy forest is needed to feed and shelter the new eggs after they hatch and young (alevin) as they grow. It’s a story only recently discovered. I had a tough time with the rocks on the left, which were obviously placed there to keep the bank from eroding, but they’re not natural, and in fact are not healthy for young fish. In the end, I added a few.

And here’s the ‘Subject Sitka Spruce’ within 100 feet of the other photo, with devils club on the left, false Soloman-seal on the ground and Nancy (the real subject of interest to me) to add a size-scale. These were taken on our field trip there last month.

This painting will eventually become an interpretive exhibit placed right here, and an entire generation of people to see and learn about the Indian River’s salmon. It will outlast me, I’m sure.

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

Dipper Bobbing – Dungeness River

American Dippers cannot seem to just stand there, but have to constantly bob up and down. This one was at the bottom of the bob.

I just have this thing for American Dippers and clear, rushing little waterfalls. So here’s another painting of my favorite little bird, mainly because we’ve seen many of them on our recent summer hikes. Dippers were also John Muir’s favorite bird. He said it was because they only live along the cleanest mountain streams and represented what’s best about American wilderness. They never stray from rushing water. Given a river bend, dippers will fly the long route around instead of short-cutting across the neck. They build nests of moss and twigs behind waterfalls, so the chicks are wet from birth. Now here’s the best part: dippers feed by jumping into the water, sometimes barely above freezing, and with wings open for balance, they just walk around underwater kicking over stones looking for aquatic insects to eat. It’s as if they’re oblivious to the fact it’s water at all. They can jump into a huge current, and then appear someplace completely different, at home just ‘ambling around’ underwater. Pop, they’ll just jump out of a pool and sit for a moment on a log, just like this painting shows, seemingly without a drop of water on them. In fact, come to think of it, I’ve never seen a dipper actually shake off water.

 Here’s where I saw this little guy, the Dungeness River up in the Buckhorn Wilderness, featured today on the Wild Olympics website and just 20 miles from home. It’s the second steepest river in America, falling 7700 feet in just 28 miles.

 

This ORIGINAL painting is varnished acrylic on linen canvas, 11″ x 14″ and $145 unframed.
This custom frame (sorry, color seems a bit off in the photo) with a linen liner 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. I have other frames of various styles too.
Email us for details.

Sorry, but it’s sold.

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.