Robin Arnold Art

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 ...

Shortly after I wrote my last blog entry, Keetie, my little guinea fowl buddy, and all but one of our chickens were killed. Here is a link to our August Lifestyles 2000 article which is a tribute to this very special bird. Scroll down to page 5 to view the article. http://lifestyles2000.net/pages/aug15/aug15.pdf We still only have the one remaining hen. Her name is Leica and she is currently sitting on an egg that the black silkie laid. I doubt that it hatches but it's worth a try.

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 ...

It's never too early to think about Christmas, especially if you carve Santas! I recently completed one with a teddy bear, one with a chickadee and lastly, a Santa carved from cottonwood bark. Santa with Chickadee  I'm big on birds and one of my favorites is the chickadee so I couldn't wait to incorporate one into a Santa carving. This Santa is carved from basswood, with acrylic paints and finished with two coats of satin varnish and one coat of wax.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/235841817/hand-carved-santa-with-staff-and?ref=shop_home_active_3 Cottonwood Bark Santa My cottonwood bark Santa is carved from a piece of bark I found lying along the shoreline of Lake Erie. To give it an extra special rustic look I left some of the bark on the carving. This carving is painted with acrylic paints and finished with two coats of satin varnish and one coat of wax.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/236475497/hand-carved-rustic-santa-robin-arnold?ref=shop_home_active_1 ...

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.