Are You My Mom??? Baby Robin out of the nest

by Conni Schaftenaar

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Dimensions

8.500 x 8.500 inches

Title

Are You My Mom??? Baby Robin out of the nest

Artist

Conni Schaftenaar

Medium

Painting - Colored Pencil On Grafix Drafting Film

Description

Baby Robin in Colored Pencil by Conni Schaftenaar.

This tiny baby robin is a fledgling that should still be in the nest. His flight feathers and tail are not developed enough to allow him to do more than short hops trying to fly, so we have to hope that he is careful about who he approaches for food!

When I was a really little girl, I loved to climb trees. I was climbing an apple tree at a neighbor's house one time and found a robin's nest with two hatchlings in it. One was somewhat older than the other, and had more feathers coming out; the other was pretty newly hatched. Against ALL warnings from my mother about leaving baby birds in nests if I found any, I just could not resist this tiny feathered creature, so I took him (I was five at most, so completely self-focused). I lied my socks off to my mother about how he was abandoned. I know she did not believe me, but there was nothing to do but to try to feed and protect this little kidnap victim.

We raised him on canned dog food, and when he was fledged a little more than the one in my drawing, I was told to keep him exercising his wings by boosting him gently into the air and letting him flap and glide to the ground. After not too much time, he did learn to fly. He then perched in a tree in our yard and waited for me to come outside with dog food. He'd fly down onto the porch railing and get some goodies. Gradually, we weaned him off of depending on us by giving him less and less food each day, forcing him to find his own. He was successful, and came back to our house for several summers - he would announce his arrival by flying down to the porch railing when I came out the back door and chirping at me. He never again had let me handle him, but that was OK! I was just happy that he had survived, because I would have been chewed out by my mother if he hadn't!

The background of this colored pencil bird is watercolor pencil, which activates and runs and plays fabulously on the drafting film. Because this work fills the whole sheet, I am calling it a painting, rather than a drawing, which I would do if I only had the drawing of the bird. This is actually a new version of the original posting - I had not liked the background on my 2020 version, so have re-done it in 2023.

UPDATE: this image was featured in the May 2023 Ann Kullberg Pencil Box Submissions, a monthly collection of colored pencil work selected from images members of various colored pencil groups submit - so thrilled!

I found the reference photo I used on PMP-Art.com:
https://pmp-art.com/rosalind-amorin/gallery/66726/baby-robin-canadian

3rd place tie in the Beautiful Birds of the USA contest, October 2022
2nd Place tie in the Nature All Around Us contest, May 2023
2nd Place tie in the Paintings of Birds contest, June 2023
3rd place win in the Wildlife Animal Portraits contest, July 2023
2nd place tie in the Baby Animals Domestic and Wild contest, July 2023
3rd place tie in the New Logo Wildlife One A Day contest, October 2023
3rd place tie in the Animal Drawing contest, November 2023

Featured in:
Created By My Pencil Power, August 2020
FAA Portraits - Birds, August 2020
Images That Excite You, August 2020
Passion For Drawing, August 2020
The World We See, August 2020
Beauty in Art - No Photography, August 2020
Midwest America Artists, August 2020
Poetic Poultry, August 2020
Pet Portraits and Animals In Colored Pencil, December 2021
Welcome Fine Artists, March 2022
Wildlife One A Day, April 2022
The ARTIST BUZzz, May 2023
For The ART of It, May 2023
The Art Workshop, May 2023
Mix Your Traditional Media, May 2023
Weekly Animal Artwork, June 2023
Flowers Birds and Butterflies, February 2024

Uploaded

August 9th, 2020

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