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 ...

September has been quite a month on our 12 acres. Within less than two weeks I had rescued a budgie(parakeet) and a rogue rooster. I first spotted the budgie one evening as we were shutting up the chickens. He was sitting on a bush in  our backyard. My first reaction was "rare bird" but I soon calmed down after looking at the yellow blob with binoculars. Definitely a budgie. I tried to capture him that evening but he flew off to the top of a very large willow tree. Over the next couple of days we spotted him off and on under the bird feeder but he always flew off with the wild birds every time we walked out the back door. About 3 days later, on our wedding anniversary, I saw him sitting on our chainlink fence all by himself...no other birds around. I grabbed some bird seed and slowly walked over to him, fully expecting him to fly away. He didn't. He let me put my seed-filled hand in front of him and he started to eat the food. While he was eating, I carefully brought up...

The last few days have been gorgeous in Ohio; so gorgeous that the bullfrogs are lined up all along the bank of the pond enjoying the sun. They know that soon they'll be buried in the muck until spring so they're taking advantage of this bonus weather. I sketched this little guy near the back of the house along with his snaky friend. The drink is swamp juice, a replacement for orange juice in northwest Ohio. The frogs weren't the only ones basking in the sun. This is Susie and Harriet, two of our 8 week old hens we bought from a hatchery in Polk, OH. Susie, on the left, is a Barred Rock and Harriet is a Golden Laced Wyandotte.

I was filling up the bird feeders when the setting sun peeked through the clouds and lit the landscape up in a beautiful glow.  I ran back into the house to get my camera and headed for our small marsh. What I saw almost took my breath away. Ohio is not know for dramatic landscapes but I think this photo shows that wherever you live there are moments of great beauty. The only thing missing were the four egrets who flew out of the marsh when I bumbled onto the scene.

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...

April 1st was a nice day, so when I got home from my part-time job I decided to skip supper and spend some time outside with my camera. The male ring-necked duck was in our pond again so I slowly headed in that direction, trying to hide behind the trees as I approached. This duck is no fool and spotted the bumbling human before I got halfway to the pond. I have been trying to get a good photo of a ring-necked for the last few years so I was disappointed when he flew off.  I wasn't ready to give up so I  headed for our small marsh, walked the short incline to the dike and was again disappointed to see there were no ducks in sight. I stayed on the dike for another 30 minutes watching flocks of tundra swans fly overhead and trying to get some flight shots. It was beautiful watching them in the setting sunlight but  the photo opportunities just weren't there so I headed back to the house to finally get some supper. I was in the backyard...

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 ...