Robin Arnold Art

My latest painting is a portrait of Travis, a giraffe that lives at the Toledo Zoo in Toledo, Ohio. For a small fee you can feed Travis from a platform that puts you high enough to look him straight in the eye. I took a photo moments after my partner had fed him and it was that photo that I used as reference for this painting. Overall, I'm happy with this but as always there are areas I need to work on. Even though I tried several times I couldn't get the wrinkles in his ears so they looked three dimensional. I had to stop fussing with it or I would have had a hole in the paper! For a long time I didn't visit the zoo because it was sad to see all of these beautiful animals kept captive but I've softened my view over the years. This isn't a perfect world and what humans have done to the environment and the wildlife that inhabits it is appalling. I now feel zoos have their place and they, among other organizations, are helping to ensure these beautiful animals ...

This monarch hanging from the chrysalis was done in pen and ink and watercolor. Prints of this are now for sale in my Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/listing/498244106/monarch-butterfly-print-pen-and-ink-and?ref=shop_home_active_1

Over the last two and a half weeks we have had fun watching seven monarch caterpillars we were raising in a "critter tank" complete their life cycles to become beautiful butterflies. Although we did this several years ago we never saw a caterpillar enter the chrysalis stage. When we saw the first caterpillar transform we were amazed and when the second one was close to changing I made sure I had my camera set up. This isn't the best video--for extra light Gena was directing a small incandescent lamp at the caterpillar--but it shows the transformation fairly well. That black thing that fell off towards the end of the video was it's butt! The entire process took three and half minutes and I've been told from one person that this caterpillar was slow and they've clocked the transformation in one minute. If you want to learn more about our experience follow the link below to our lastest Lifestyle 2000 article. As always Gena did a great job writing it. The ...

I am a nervous person riddled with panic attacks on a good day but this year has been more challenging than usual and I'm to the point where I feel like I may end up in a padded room before my 60th birthday in November. To try and bring some calm back into my psyche I've been drawing and playing around with watercolors as often as possible. My drawings show promise; the watercolors, not so much. Maybe it's because of my age and the fact that I grew up with a black and white TV but I do much better with gray scale than I do with color. Charlie This is Charlie, a former neighbors cat who decided he liked our place better. This is my second attempt at this drawing, the first one ending up in the trash. Charlie was a challenge and I probably should have picked something smaller and more manageable. By the time I got his head done I just wanted this drawing to end but a cat head floating in space doesn't have much appeal so I kept at it until I finally had a complete ...

I finished my second pencil drawing of this male Lesser Scaup over Memorial Day weekend. There are areas that could be improved upon but I'm amazed it turned out as well as it did. These drawings mean more to me than words can express, not only because I just love to draw but for several years my right thumb hurt so badly that it made that hand essentially unusable. Everything I loved to do, including my wood carving, came to a grinding halt. I couldn't even hold a pencil or paintbrush without extreme pain. After a few years my thumb finally got better but then it started to hurt because of arthritis. After almost ten years of being side-lined the pain has lessened and I'm finally able to do some carving and a little drawing. I have to be very careful though, because if I overdo it my thumb starts to hurt.  I think painting with watercolors would be less stressful on my hands so I bought a set along with a couple books and I'm trying to paint something that looks r...

Several wood ducks and hooded mergansers have been flying in and out of the new nesting boxes we put up this spring but one female wood duck has finally claimed one of the boxes as her own and is now incubating the eggs. This is the box on the edge of our pond and the one that we are able to keep a closer eye on. Female wood duck perched on a nest box Now that the female is incubating the eggs the male wood duck isn't hanging as much around but a week ago, when the following photos were taken,  he was still with the female. While she was checking out the box or laying eggs he would swim around in front of the box, keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings. Male wood duck swimming in front of the nest box I was  very fortunate to get a photo of the two of them together before she entered the nest box. I won't get another chance for a photo like this until next spring! Pair of wood ducks in our pond near the nest box

 We finally had a family of Canada geese show up yesterday! The adults, unlike most, seem to be ok with me standing close enough to get some nice photos. What really struck me about the 8 goslings was the amount of fighting going on between them. The fighting was not playful bantering and I had an awful feeling one or two could be killed. This morning when they showed up there were only 7 goslings. There is no way to know for sure what happened to one of the goslings but I do wonder if one of its siblings killed it. We've had a lot of geese on our property and I have never seen goslings fight this viciously.

I've decided to scale down my photography and later this year I plan on selling my 500mm lens I use for bird photography. I'm 59 and every year it gets harder and harder to drag that heavy gear around. What I want to do is spend more time drawing and eventually try some watercolors. This is something I've wanted to do my entire life but for one reason or another I've never seriously pursued it. I also didn't think I could draw but I now believe anyone can if one has the desire and  puts the effort into it. Most of us won't turn out to be great artists but we will be able to turn out an acceptable piece of art that we can be proud of. This is my first serious pencil drawing and I'm ecstatic it  actually looks like a chickadee! To get a better idea of the different gradations of tones I printed this photo in black and white. I sketched in the chickadee with an HB pencil and then used progressively softer leads for the darker areas of the bird, with a 4B...

On April 24, just over a week ago, I wrote about the two wood duck nest boxes we put up on our property. The box we put on the back edge of the pond is visible from our house and with our binoculars we've been able to watch ducks, sparrows and swallows checking it out. Nest box on the edge of the pond We're not experts on monitoring nest boxes of any kind so after doing a little research we discovered that the boxes should be checked in the morning to help keep raccoons away. I assume this is because the scent we leave behind will have a chance to dissipate before the racoons come out in the early evening. So every morning I have checked on our two boxes. The one on the edge of the marsh hasn't seen much activity yet but I'm pulling a huge wad of twigs, feathers, etc. out of the "pond box" that the house sparrows are trying to take over. Thursday morning I mistakenly thought the box was empty and when I started to open it a female wood duck flew out...

April usually brings kinglets, yellow-rumped warblers and several other early migrating birds to our property but this year, because of northeast winds, the migration is a little behind schedule. I finally saw a pair of  yellow warblers two days ago near the back of the property. Male Yellow Warbler in dogwood We have several of these warblers nest on our 12 acres every year.  I found this nest in the following photo last year before the leaves of the dogwood had totally blocked it from view. Female Yellow Warbler sitting on her nest. The winter of 2013/2014 was so severe that for the first time in almost 30 years we didn't have any Canada geese goslings being raised on our property and it looked like this year was going to be a repeat of last. In the last week, however, we have had a pair hanging around in our marsh and we're hopeful they'll nest on top of this muskrat house. Our marsh is only about 5 years old so this will only be the second time we've h...

Male Ringed-necked Duck  The ring-necked ducks are gone now but earlier this month we had a few hanging around on our pond. This year the weather  and the ducks cooperated and I was able to get nice pics of the male and female. The ring around the neck is very hard to see so I always ID this duck by the ring around it's bill.   Female Ring-necked Duck Ring-necks are diving ducks and every year a few stop by our pond to fuel up before completing their trip north to breed. The following photo shows a male ring-necked duck in the foreground beginning to dive. The duck behind him is a female bufflehead who stayed with the ring-necks for several days. Male ring-necked duck(in the foreground) diving for food

I took a break from mowing grass and putting up wood duck nest boxes to finally finish my "frog on a driftwood box". I made one of these for a custom order a few weeks ago and it turned out fairly well so I decided to make another for my Etsy store. The box is made from a piece of driftwood that I found along the shoreline of Lake Erie near where I live. Driftwood has become a hot commodity so anytime I can find a good looking, usable piece I consider myself lucky. The frog is carved from basswood and painted with acrylic paints. The inside of the box is drilled out with a large bit on a drill press,  and the lid swivels on a dowel. To see more details check froggy out at my Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/listing/230687315/hand-carved-frog-on-driftwood-box-rustic

Yesterday morning was not nice weather-wise but I decided to go out with my camera despite the ugly conditions and try to get a photo of a pied-billed grebe. This grebe has been hanging out here for the past week and unlike most waterfowl who fly away before I can get close enough for a photo this duck stays put while I walk my dogs around the marsh. Pied-billed grebes are very small so even though they don't fly off it's still very hard to get close enough for a good photo, even with a super telephoto lens. With a diving duck such as this I try to creep closer when they dive for food. You can never be sure where they will pop up but I got lucky and this one surfaced in front of me fairly close to where I was standing. In this photo you can see the large chunky bill of the grebe. With this stout bill this diminutive duck is capable of crushing and eating  crustaceans and fish. Pied-billed Grebe I'm fairly certain this is a male pied-billed and I'm hoping he is t...

Bear on a Box This is my latest addition to my "critter on a box" series! The possibilities for these little boxes is only limited by my imagination  and unfortunately, my skill level. I have some neat ideas in my head but they will have to be placed on the back burner until I become a Master Carver. In the meantime I'm happy doing my cute folk art carvings. If they make someone smile I've done my job. The box is made from a piece of driftwood I picked up along the Lake Erie shoreline. There are a lot of neat things-- besides burning it in a campfire-- that you can do with driftwood so it's a  hot commodity in this area.  Anytime I can find a weathered  piece of wood that's usable I'm happy. This particular piece was perfect. It has a nice weathered look but it's not so far gone that it's falling apart. Inside of Box The hole in the box is drilled out with a forstner bit and the lid swivels on a dowel. For more details click on the fo...

Snowy day in Ohio is an understatement! When we woke up this morning we had about a foot of snow on the ground. We went to TSC on Saturday and stocked up on bird seed and suet to help out our feathered friends during this nasty storm. So far at our feeders we've had goldfinches, house finches, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, nuthatches, tree sparrows, juncos, house sparrows, downy woodpeckers, mourning doves and a red-bellied woodpecker. We've also had a Coopers hawk visit several times looking for a meal. The wind wasn't too bad Sunday morning so I went out with my camera to see if I could get some photos of birds in the snow. Northern Cardinal This first one is of a Northern Cardinal. I've tried for a long time to get a nice photo of a male cardinal sitting on a snowy branch but it never worked out very well for me. I finally got a nice, sharp photo of this cardinal sitting in a snowy thicket.  I like this one because you can see the snow sticking to his ...

From time to time we will be posting one of our articles that we wrote  for a small local magazine.  This one was written in the summer of 2009. 12 ACRES IN OHIO Remembering Betsy             Two years ago this month we lost a dear friend. She was a one-legged Barred Rock hen, and she was a big part of our daily lives for 3 years. She left a big empty space when she died…. Betsy looking for bugs. You can see her crippled leg in this photo.   She came to us along with twenty other day-old Barred Rock chicks five years ago. At first, she looked like all the other chicks, but a couple of weeks after their arrival, we noticed the leg of one of the chicks was angled out and she walked on her hock. Our first concern was that she might have some horrible disease that could be passed on to the other chicks. But everything we read said that probably was not the case. Then we were worried that the others...

Cottonwood Hand Carved Decorative Birdhouse Welcome to my new blog and first post.This whimsical birdhouse is my latest cottonwood bark carving. Cottonwood bark is a popular carving medium and I'm always looking for different ways to use it in my work. Although the best bark comes from the western states I have been able, so far,  to find usable bark in the area in which I live. This type of carving is called deep relief because the back of the piece is not carved. Back of birdhouse carving The bluebird is carved from a small piece of basswood and was glued into the birdhouse opening. The carving was finished with acrylic paints, two coats of satin varnish and one coat of wax. The carving can be purchased at: https://www.etsy.com/listing/219951825/relief-carving-decorative-birdhouse