Tag Archives: Wildlife

New Painting Post

Song Sparrow study

A new painting today, a small study of one of my meadow-buddies – an LBJ (Little Brown Job – as a very skilled birder once referred to them once).

Song sparrows are fairly common little birds, but their spirit in singing makes up for a lack of rareness. I think I remember reading that there are something like 50 separate races of these guys across America, and each bird can know up to 1000 variations of it’s song. The one common thread for all of them is that the song, no matter where it’s singer lives, ends with four notes resembling Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 opening, TA DA DA da. And so there’s your nature class for the day. Nancy says I cannot go an hour without attempting to teach something to someone! Okay, I admit it!

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.  I also have traditional oak frames.

This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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, Wildlife

Western Tanager study

Western-Tanager

Nancy has put oranges out by the pond for these birds. I think we get the very same pair back each year – after a winter holiday all the way down in Central America. While the female lacks the red head feathers, I’ve read that the male gets them from eating certain insects – along with berries from our cherry trees. We gladly give up our fruit for the companionship of this pair – and so I painted the male on the hunt.

And here’s the frame it’s currently in (and comes with the painting). I think the color is a tad off on the photo. The wood is more blond, painting less blue – I took it on the porch on a sunny day, so things got funky.

Western-Tanager-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us for details.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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.

Murals

Eifert on the Washington Ferries for the Summer

2015-Getaway-Cover

The Port Townsend Leader newspaper puts out a free summer magazine for visitors, and this issue has a piece of my Mount Rainier mural on the cover. That’s fun for sure, but they also used a bunch of smaller wildlife paintings scattered throughout the inside, making the entire thing sort of an Eifert Gallery in print. These magazines are on all the local ferries and in the terminals, lodging and visitor centers, a nice thing for awhile until I get sick seeing this painting everywhere I travel. Thanks, Marian, for being so delicate when you chopped up the painting and moved a few critters around. Here is the entire magazine online.

And here’s the original painting in the Ohanapecosh Visitor Center, Mount Rainier National Park.

Rainier-installation

I did this painting back in the day when I used to just dance into park offices and offer my services – as if I were somebody. I was cheap and completely unaware of the ‘rules’ of RFQs, IDIQs, funding sources and liability insurance policy constraints. I’d just go in and say “you need this” and they’d say, “sure, we’ll take it out of this fund here in the bottom drawer”.  Now? Well, don’t get me started.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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.

Murals, Wildlife

Point Reyes National Seashore

Point-Reyes-final

I think some of you will say “wait a New York minute, I’ve seen this.” True, but this week I was in a client’s office looking at my website on her computer and this painting wasn’t there. Embarrassing.  There were posts of progress, of locations last year, the sketch – but I spaced out the posting of the final version. I keep this stuff on my blog/website for reference, like a catalog – and with almost 500 pages it’s a handful to keep track of. So bear with me while I add this one from last year to it.

If you haven’t seen this place, it’s Point Reyes National Seashore just north of San Francisco. A landscape full of atmosphere and history for me (I’ve hiked it, rode a horse through it, sailed by it in my own boat twice). We arrived at Headquarters and asked what they wanted in the painting. The beach, lighthouse, fog, ocean, redwoods, Doug-fir, Drakes Estuary, Tamales Bay, about 50 sq miles of coastal scrub with all the critters. Nothing to it! The painting hangs in the main visitor center, the back of the new park map features it, and now it’s  here.

Finished map and mural.

finished-maps=web

Labels were added on a draft design that wasn’t used.Point-reyes-labels

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, Wildlife

Some Little Bits of Art for a Prairie Exhibit

In these posts I always try to show what I’ve currently been painting. This week it was finishing up over two dozen of these little insets for outdoor wayside panels – Land Trust on nearby Whidbey Island. (thanks, Mark and Pat) I like the looseness of these illustrations – telling a story, yet artistic enough as stand-alone little paintings.  Here are a few of them.

Vole
Vole in the grass

Bumblebee-and-Golden-Paintbrush
Bumblebee on Golden Paintbrush, one of the Northwest’s rarest flowers

Chorus-Frog
Chorus Frog – they’re singing tonight.

Rear-Admiral-and-Selfheal
Red Admiral and Selfheal

Swallowtail-and-Aster
Swallowtail and Aster

A friend and painter recently asked me if I ever tired of pushing all this paint around flat surfaces. I had to think, no, never – but pushing keys on this silly computer, dealing with all the amazing amount of stupid details of an art business, it just drives both of us nuts. Give me a trail, a sketchpad, a sunny day and I’m in heaven.

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 Published Story

Anemones – A 48 North published story

2015-2-Fish-Anemones

This was my 48 North magazine story recently. Below is the text that went with this ‘sketchbook’ image. Almost forgot to post it! Too much art coming out of here.

Like a scene straight out of ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ the brilliant red and yellow flower unfolds, over 100 petals waving in the current, a strawberry red delight for a passing perch to nibble on. A young perch moves closer, then closer still, and suddenly receives a stunning jolt that renders it useless. Through the haze, the fish vaguely sees those beautiful petals reach out and pull it towards the flower’s center, where once a flat pad was, now a mouth opens. A delight it’s not, but a splendid sea-predator whose tentacles first sting small fish, shrimp and even crabs, and then entirely consumes them in one slow-motion swallow. Fish go in tail first, and they can turn a crab around so claws are facing away before proceeding.

It gets better. The fish-eating anemone can switch between being male and female – and may live to be 100-plus years of age. Sure they look like beautiful flowers, are related to coral and jellyfishes, but at 10 inches across, these hunters are some of the Salish Sea’s largest anemones. But everyone has a softer side, and the fish-eating anemone may also play host to small fish, allowing six-inch painted greenlings a safe harbor. Leaving the protection of the anemone by day, at night the greenling sleeps without harm right over the anemone’s mouth on the central oral disc. The fish are safe here because anemones use their tentacles for defense against predators like sea stars or snails.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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

Ruby-crowned Kinglet study

Ruby-crowned-Kinglet

Sorry, this little painting is sold – thanks Matt. When I painted it a couple of months ago, it went out the door before I could post it here. And then I completely forgot about it. Acrylic on board, it’s a little study of a Ruby Crowned Kinglet. The thing about these little birds, at least to me, is that they’re so fleeting, so flitty and nervous, that I never truly get to appreciate the top little red beret hat on the males. Luckily, paintings hold still for as long as you want so you can check it out.

Ruby-crowned-Kinglet-framed

Short but sweet this week. Consider it catching up on things, a spring cleaning event when the cherries, currents, trilliums and bluebells are all in bloom.

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

Brown Creeper – Going Down

Brown-Creeper

Easily one of my favorite LBJ’s (little brown jobs). This is a brown creeper, a bug-eating specialist that hangs out fairly consistently in our little forest here in Port Townsend. It never visits the feeders, but instead carefully searches tree trunks for a next bug-meal – usually on the biggest trees they can find. Nuthatches usually spiral DOWN tree trunks, while creepers often pass them as they go up, picking off the insects the nuthatches miss. Once at the top, they fly to the bottom of the next tree and start it all over again. I show this guy going down, and of course they’d do this too occasionally just looking at their scenery the other direction. I just had this view in my mind of its compact little body upended.

Brown-Creeper-framed

This ORIGINAL painting is acrylic on board, 6″ x 9″ and $145 framed. Outside edge of the frame is about 12″ x 15″.
This custom frame has a triple liner and glass. Shipping adds just a bit more depending on your zone. This is the original painting, NOT a print.
Email us if you’d like it hanging on YOUR wall instead of mine.

Yuming-Yang-commission

And the answer to last week’s question: where is this?

Not a single person guessed the answer to my question last week of where the coastal scene was. Lots of guesses that included several states, but no one thought that is was made up. The idea was to paint a place that ‘feels’ like Olympic NP, has river, ocean, seastacks, mountains and old-growth. Got’m all, it’s just nowhere that’s real.

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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

Where Is This? A Little Travel Quiz

Yuming-Yang-commission

Private commission, sold. Click the image and it’ll enlarge in your browser.

This week it’s a test for those Northwest-Coast-hikers and lovers of all things rainforest and wilderness coast. Where is this? Big wild beach, sea stacks, big river coming down from snow-covered mountains, old-growth forest. Nope, not Canada. There are some tiger lilies, a few lupine and false soloman seal to round it out. But where is it? Get it right and I’ll send you a free park jigsaw puzzle of your choice.

 

This is a commission for a buyer of mine who lives in Texas. Used to live here in the Seattle area, loves the Northwest, but is now stuck in a place so unlike the Northwest he’s been purchasing my paintings to remind him where his heart really is. Thanks, Yuming, it was a lot of fun.

And thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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.

Murals

A New Painting of a Summer Prairie on Whidbey Island

Summer-Prairie-5

Just a couple of small changes and I’d call this 24″ x 48″ painting a wrap. This is the seventh image for wayside exhibits at the Admiralty Inlet Preserve, a place of rare beauty just across the channel from Port Townsend, Washington. The Whidbey Camano Island Land Trust has been commissioning me for a series of outdoor exhibits, and this one speaks of the mid-to-late summer natural prairie area and their efforts of being land stewards.  It’s been many decades since fire has been used to revitalize this place, so that’s what the smoke is at the top.

Sheehan_Prairie

SAM_2353

And here are a couple of reference photos showing what it really looks like. Top photo by Mark Sheehan, bottom one by me. Imagine trying to accurately paint this complex landscape. It was a challenge, but I think I fairly well got it. It’s one thing to just abstract it up and toss in a bunch of grass and sedge stalks, but quite another to figure out individual species and how it grows. Patience, I guess, or optimistic enthusiasm that I might be able to figure it out! 

Thanks for reading this week. Send this to someone who might appreciate what I’m painting and tell them to sign up. I’m trying to expand my list. An email will work.
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.