Tag Archives: Wildlife

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.

New Painting Post

NEW: Secrets of the Old-growth Forest Poster

A new Larry Eifert poster is now available, an 18″ x 24″ companion piece to the Old-growth Forests poster I recently blogged about. While we’ve printed a jigsaw puzzle of this image before, there was never a poster. The best part of this is that we had the printer roll them – yes, ROLL THEM (how modern can we get) so we didn’t have to do that. Yes, the warehouse is somewhat stuffed at the moment, so help us out.

The poster back is sectioned off into four areas that can easily be photocopied by teachers to develop a lesson plan. We encourage this as it makes for a really good teaching tool. So, help us pay this stupid printing bill: You can buy this poster here.

The original painting is installed in the Prairie Creek museum in Redwood National Park near Orick, California. Next time you’re there to see one of the truly great forests on the planet, stop by and see the painting. Redwood NP has many Eiferts, including three murals and something like forty other paintings scattered around on exhibit panels and waysides. It’s like a big art gallery in the forest.

The forest at Prairie Creek: it has 10 times the biomass of a typical tropical rain forest, and holds the most living or once-living organic matter of any forest on Earth. No wonder I like it, no wonder it’s a park.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Or click here to follow me on Facebook. I post lots of other stuff there.

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

Eifert Paintings In Sitka

There are LOTS of historic totem poles at the Sitka National Historical Park in Sitka, Alaska, and soon there will also be some Eiferts. This past week we had the distinct privilege to spend it in one of the most interesting, beautiful and historically-significant towns in America, and one of the most remote as well. No roads go to Sitka, and in fact it’s the only town that faces the Gulf of Alaska head-on (seven feet of rain annually – but only the tourists care). There are about 9,000 people there who own 7500 vehicles – but they have only 21.5 miles of roads – and I would guess there are more fishing boats than people. The National Park Service has the oldest national park unit in Alaska there, with a beautiful visitor center and historical park along the Indian River, as well as the Russian Bishop’s House, a meticulously restored and remarkable two-story massive structure built in 1842 that is mind-boggling in its history, furnishing and especially the building itself. In an effort to keep this short, let’s just say we had a very good time – and boy, are those people friendly.

 My task is now to create some paintings of the salmon runs in the Indian River. So after five other concept sketches, this was my best try, and I think it will work. I won’t explain it now, but you’ll soon see the painting, a forest scene with bears, ravens, eagles and lots of spawning salmon. I plan to blog more about this stuff as it progresses.

And here’s the painting’s location along the river. An amazingly beautiful place, you’d never know it’s right smack in the middle of town. As we walked in this forest, we constantly heard bald eagles and ravens talking among themselves high overhead in the upper canopy. While we were there one day, a string trio played in a meadow within 200 feet of this photo location and I’ve never heard a cello, viola and violin played along with eagles and ravens singing from the balcony – and as loud as the wooden instruments themselves.

Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Or click here to follow me on Facebook. I POSTED A PHOTO ALBUM OF THIS TRIP ON THERE, SO CHECK IT OUT.

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 gets some Eifert paintings

There are LOTS of historic totem poles at the Sitka National Historical Park and Southeast Alaska Indian Cultural Center in Sitka, Alaska, and soon there will also be some Eiferts. This past week we had the distinct privilege to spend it in one of the most interesting, beautiful and historically-significant towns in America, and one of the most remote as well. No roads go to Sitka, and in fact it’s the only town that faces the Gulf of Alaska head-on. There are about 9,000 people there who own 7500 cars – but there’s only 21.5 miles of roads to drive them on – and I’d guess there are more fishing boats than people. The National Park Service has the oldest national park unit in Alaska, and there’s a beautiful visitor center and historic park along the Indian River, as well as the Russian Bishop’s House, a meticulously restored and remarkable two-story massive structure built in 1842 that is mind-boggling in it’s history, furnishings and especially the building itself. In an effort to keep this short, let’s just say we had a very good time – and boy, are these people friendly.

My task is now to create some paintings of the salmon runs in the Indian River. So after five other concept sketches, this was my best try, and I think it will work. I won’t explain it now, but you’ll soon see the painting, a forest scene with brown bears, ravens, eagles and lots of salmon returning to spawn.

And here’s the location along the river. An amazingly beautiful place, and you’d never know it but it’s right smack in the middle of town. As we walked in these woods, we constantly overheard bald eagles and ravens ‘talking’ among themselves high in the canopy. While we were there one day, a string trio played in a meadow within 200 feet of this photo location and I’ve never heard a cello, viola and violin played along with eagles and ravens chinning in from the balcony – and as loud as the wooden instruments. Remarkable.

And here’s the initial species list I created on location. It was written in the order of discussion and while we didn’t see all these critters here, we saw almost all of them somewhere on our stay – even the grizzlies.

 

 

Stay tuned. It’ll be a fun painting – and there are five other smaller paintings coming as well. I’m excited.

 

 

 

Finally: I don’t usually do this, but I’d like to recommend the channel-side small inn and restaurant we stayed at in Sitka. It’s the Fly-In-Fish-Inn and it couldn’t have been a better experience. Ken and Carla made us feel like we were family.

 

 

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Or click here to follow me on Facebook. I post lots of other stuff there, like trip photos of this expedition.

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.