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 ...

It's been a long time since I've posted anything but I'm going to try and breathe some life back into my blog. I've had problems with a pinched nerve over the last year that was so debilitating I had to resign from my job and for a few months it was hard to lift my arm to paint. This was no great loss to the art world but it left a big void in my life. Although it hasn't gone away it has gotten better. I still have a hard time taking photos, lifting binoculars and sometimes drawing/painting but I am getting the strength back in my arm and the pain is much more manageable than a year ago. Despite my physical limitations and my utter lack of confidence in my abilities I do think I reached a new plateau in my watercolor painting. After a ton of bad paintings ending up in the wastebasket something finally clicked. The painting below of a Cedar Waxwing was a breakthrough and although I still have many failures they are not as frequent as they were a few months ago. ...

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

We have some very large bullfrogs on our property and yesterday I saw three sitting in the shade of a maple that grows on the edge of the pond. I wanted to get a photo of one of the monsters and while I was fiddling around with my camera and trying to get into a good position, I noticed something sticking on its skin near the frog's mouth. I figured it was a blade of grass but when I finally got a closer look I saw it was a spring azure butterfly. I couldn't believe the frog didn't eat it's friend. Blame it on the extreme heat or the frog had just ate a very large meal. We are in a moderate drought so there is the possibility that the butterfly was getting a much-needed drink off the frogs moist skin. Much better than getting your feet muddy near the edge of the pond. And yes, I do plan on using this photo for a drawing/painting :)

Earlier this week we were taking a walk around the marsh and we saw a pair of Canada geese sitting on top of a muskrat den. We figured it was the same pair who nested there last year but as we got closer we noticed there was something not quite right with one of the geese. It's head was wasn't dark black and the bill and feet were orange, not black as they should be. I took some photos and posted them on FB to get some opinions on this odd goose. Turns out this is a hybrid goose and after doing some research it seems likely a Canada goose mated with a Greylag domestic goose.  This is a photo of the hybrid goose swimming with his mate in our pond. I was surprised a female would pick a mate who was not the norm but I guess it's not a big deal to her. The hybrid also doesn't sound like a Canada goose as you can hear in the video below. This pair is still fighting with another pair for the rights to a  nesting spot in our marsh so it will be interesting...

Gena and I decided to walk  a few laps around our marsh yesterday afternoon but we didn't get very far before we were waylaid by several chickadees looking for a hand-out. It was a cold day with a bitter northeast wind but it was well worth the frozen and numb fingers to bond with these adorable little birds. The chickadees will eat of Gena's or my hand but in this video Gena is feeding them while I documented it with my new point and shoot camera. This is a great little camera to take on walks because it's nice and light...a lot easier than carrying heavy DSLR equipment. Not long ago it was a big deal to have 1-2 chickadees feed from our hand but the population is slowly growing and yesterday there must have been 3-5 birds flying in for a treat. When we first started feeding them a year ago they would fly in close to investigate but they wouldn't perch on our hand. We solved that problem by placing our hand under a small branch where the chickadees could safe...

Gena and I are again in search of salamanders. The last 4 years put a huge damper on our evening activities because of Gena being unceremoniously dumped on afternoon shift. After 47 years of working in a lab she officially retired at the end of 2015 so we can now pick up where we left off. We went out two nights when the conditions seemed to be perfect--warm and rainy--but we didn't see anything except hundreds of earthworms. We know they're out there somewhere but until we actually find a live one I will have to be content to draw pics of what it would be like to shine the flashlight on one or two of these amphibians. This intriguing pair  were big enough to chew off a foot but fortunately they were smiling and seemed quite friendly. I have no clue where they got the umbrella!

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 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'm fairly certain this is the pair who have claimed the pond box as their own. Yesterday afternoon the female went into the box and the male took a five hour nap on top of it. I hurried home from work so I could get a photo but Gena said they both flew away about five minutes before I got home. I took this photo last week of the duck eggs in the pond nest box. I checked for two successive  mornings after I took this photo and it went from four eggs to six and from six to nine which indicated more than one duck is laying in this box. After the female is done laying eggs she pulls out her own downy breast feathers and mixes  them in with the wood  chips for extra warmth. This photo was taken two days ago on 5/5/15.  Let the incubation begin!

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...

After talking about it for the last couple of years, we finally decided to order two wood duck nest boxes. Why didn't we do it sooner? These large nest boxes are no small feat to put up for anyone at any age but for two women, aged 59 and 65, it's a monumental task!  UPS delivered two wood duck nest boxes UPS delivered the nest boxes on April 17th, and that morning we got out the post hole digger, an 8 foot 4x4 post and went to work. This one was erected on the edge of our pond.Thank goodness our property is usually a soggy mess in the spring as it made the job of digging a hole much easier. Gena and Keetie digging the hole for a nest box We put the second box up the following morning on the edge of the marsh and I've spent the last week lathering myself with arthritis cream and popping Tylenol and Aleve for sore hands, neck, back, etc. Was it worth it? Well, a certain male house sparrow is ecstatic we went to all this work just for hi...

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

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...

While Gena and I were drinking our morning coffee a phoebe flew up to the window, looked in, and then perched on a feeder post. Phoebes, one of the earliest spring migrants , are in the flycatcher family. We also have Willow Flycatchers that nest on our property and I have a feeling I've been getting the similar vocalizations of these two birds mixed up. I'm now starting to wonder if phoebes have also been nesting close by. Their nests have a mud foundation and anyone who has ever visited our property knows this is the "land of mud". We also have protected spots on our barn and a couple of smaller  buildings that would be a good location for a phoebe nest. We'll be keeping on eye out for nesting phoebes and keep you updated. Eastern Phoebe I'm not only watching birds but carving them. Below is a rustic cottonwood bark Bald Eagle I just finished.  I still have to paint it but so far I'm happy with this carving. I've done a few of these in the pas...