Robin Arnold Art

 Gena and I have had a problem with this ever since we've had chickens. We also have tons of rabbits and every year a few of them go the Easter Bunny route. We have actually caught them in the coop, yanking eggs out of the next boxes. This particular hen has obviously made a deal with one of the bunnies in return for a pile of dew worms. This was a very fast sketch using Micron pens and watercolor. I had a fever while I did this so that might explain a lot :)

Sketching and painting from my photos hasn't been going well lately so after disgustedly  throwing another one in the waste basket I decided to try sketching without any reference material. I figure I'm almost 60 years old so there should there be something floating around in my head that I can pull out. The first one I sketched was this Teddy bear sitting on a rug drinking a beer and eating snacks.  I went to bed thoroughly  bummed out after spending the evening trying to sketch an animal from one of my photos . While I was swearing  I would never try this crazy stuff again I picked up my sketchpad to do who knows what. I had no reference photo and I wasn't interested in drawing a blob of fur from one of our two dogs who were already curled up in a ball and fast asleep. In around 15 minutes I had drawn this very simple Teddy bear and the following morning I added the watercolor which really made it pop. Is it perfect?...not by a long shot. Teddy lo...

This has been a tough spring here. Unlike other parts of the country that are having severe droughts it has done nothing but rain where I live and trying to keep up with the mowing has severely cut into my carving time. As you can see in the following photo I have a few that need to be finished. We are supposed to get up to 3" of rain tomorrow which means our place will most likely be flooded. I can't mow through standing water so maybe I'll get some carving time in this weekend. I've also had to cut back on  my carving because of two additions to our small flock of chickens. Last Sunday we were given two black silkies...a rooster--we swore we would never have a rooster again--and a hen. Black Silkie Rooster Meet Thor the rooster. Thor loves to protect his kingdom by hanging out in front of the coop which  is not good because the hens are terrified of him and can't get into the coop to lay eggs. Meanwhile, Thor is terrified of Keetie, our guinea, so he ...

"The very chemical composition of our blood alters slightly in spring; we sense the coming of the season in our life-stream." Edwin Way Teale Well, I feel something in my blood but it might be because I have ice running through my veins. Two more nights this week with temps in the single digits or below zero. The highway is buckling up in front of our house, our driveway and porch are falling apart and who knows what is happening with our three year old cistern. We also lost one of our sweetest hens due to the stress of this awful cold weather. Her name was Pearl and she was rescued from an egg factory in CA. She had reached the two year old mark and was slated to be gassed because she had outlived her usefulness. She was a sweet and curious little hen and she truly acted grateful that she finally had a chance to experience the life of a free-range chicken. I hadn't intended on having a chicken in the following photo but Pearl tagged along with me that morning to the...

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...