Tag Archives: Wildlife

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.

New Painting Post

Hooded Merganser study

2015-3-Hooded-Margansers

“Stick it on the paper, hard and fast, as fast as your brain can move the pencil and brush. Don’t think about this, just do it!”

Today, a little watercolor that isn’t for sale, but is part of another project – and I liked it enough to show it around. If art is simply reflecting life, this little male Hooded Merganser could have been painted several times this past month. We’ve been seeing several courting pairs in the Port Townsend Boat Haven marina on hikes through town, and we watch as each male is circling, rearing back, showing off his Mohawk to a potential lady-love. Later, they’ll find a nest hole up one of our local wilderness rivers like the Dungeness and set up house.

Not so many lines, a dash of color, and you get a Hooded Merganser.

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 Published Story

Oystercatchers – Published January 2015

2015-1-Oystercatchers

Here is my 48 North story for January, 2015 – saw a pair of these guys along the beach in town, so, art copies life. And here’s the text that went with it. 

With orange eye, darker eye-ring and astonishing red-orange bill, black oystercatchers might be described as a bird in a Halloween outfit. And then there are those fleshy legs and feet. When we recently saw two on beach rocks, we both stopped and said the same thing: whowee! There are around 400 oystercatchers in the Puget Sound area, and they tend to nest on grassy beaches without trees nearby (think predators overhead). Oystercatchers don’t migrate, but in winter might form loose flocks. It’s reported that all the San Juan oystercatchers get together in a sort of winter confab. Listen for their loud, piercing whistle, which to me implies wild rocky coasts like no other sound.

If you notice that orange bill, it’s not just long, but strangely-shaped like a sideways chisel. It begins as a triangle at the skull, but immediately slims down to a vertical pry bar all the way out to the blunt tip.  Why? Because these birds make their living prying shells off rocks. With one stab of that bill on a partially-open shell’s adductor muscle, it’s toast, and with the mussel open the oystercatcher can pull out the contents – dinner on the half-shell. This is often accomplished in the wave zone because wet mussels are already open a tad to filter water. I’ve watched oystercatchers working limpet beds with a quick: pry off and stab, pry and stab – gulp, gulp. Pure proficiency.

Larry Eifert paints and writes about wild places. His work is in many national parks across America – and at larryeifert.com.

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

Pacific Wren study

Pacific-Wren

This little wren hangs out around the deer-fenced garden. It sometimes sits on the gate, not 20 feet from where I’m sitting right now, 50 feet from where this was painted.

Feels like it’s family in some way – short cocky tail, no neck. That’s a Pacific Wren ‘look’ all right, and the instant way you can i.d. this little ball of brown fluff.

Pacific-Wren-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.

Posts about other stuff

A New Website For Me – Oh Boy

Eifert-front-page

See it here at LarryEifert.com

I’ve probably spent too much time messing with this instead of painting, but I now have a new website, completely redesigned, lots of new stuff, lots of little interesting corners with new content. And with a total of around 390 pages and posts, things were getting messy with the old one – so, I spent some time over the holidays tearing it apart and rebuilding a more modern version.

 

This one is ‘responsive’, meaning it looks good on your phone and tablet, pc and laptop – all of them at once if you have eight eyes. It still has the shopping cart with all the goodies like the puzzles, but there are new travel albums, 24 pages of murals and park projects that are better laid out. Better search capabilities are there too.  That’s Nancy lurking behind all the backgrounds, she comes, she goes, up and down some of our favorite local trails.

Smaller-Wildlife-Paintings

All my weekly posts are here too – might make a good book someday. There are over 300 of them. The comments are still closed until I can find a better spam screening, but that’s coming soon.

I finally got all the recent smaller paintings into albums there that can be seen as slideshows. There’s a lot of content that’s never been seen like this. Again, here’s the link, but it’s still just larryeifert.com.

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. We’re redesigning her site too – so check it out.

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