[WIP] Diamondback terrapin (Patreon)

[wallpaper] Diamondback terrapin

When I uploaded the wallpaper post yesterday, I was thought about what background color to use, but when I woke up and looked at it, I liked the pastel pink color I originally intended 😄 (Thank you for your comments too!)

At the sketch stage, I tried to use the same colors as the snake-necked turtle I drew a while ago. But I changed my mind in the middle. The reason is that I wanted to paint the diamondback terrapin in more pastel blue and pastel pink tones rather than brown tones.

To give you a brief introduction about this turtle, it is a brackish water turtle that lives in North America. That's why some turtle photo i saw have barnacles attached to their shells like sea turtles. They are small enough to be held in one hand or fit on the palm of your hand, and can live up to 40 years. Females are considerably larger than males. The largest female weighs about 1kg! In the past, they were popular as food, so there was a crisis in their population, and they are still classified as a species of concern. When I did a photo search on iNaturalist, there were quite a few photos of dead turtles as roadkill. It broke my heart 😭

Their patterns are all unique, just like human fingerprints, even in nature. I looked at a lot of pictures of turtles while I was drawing and none of them looked exactly the same. Super cool 💎

At the sketch stage, the pattern was not drawn in advance.

Diamondback terrapin is one species with seven subspecies and some morphs.

They are quite popular as pets too because of their small size and gentle personality, beautiful appearance.

The grade of the morph seems to be determined by the pattern and color. It seems the simpler pattern, brighter the shell, and the whiter the skin, the higher the grade.

Mangrove terrapins are one of rarest diamond back terrapin. They are really cute because of their blue skin. When I saw their photos in nature, I felt something mystical. ** I drew them mostly in blue to match the overall color tone of the picture, but if you look closely, you can see that I colored the mangrove terrapin especially blue 💙

Northern has countless small dots. I drew fewer dots in the process of simplifying. (Drawing too many can cause trypophobia 👽)

Albino morphs seem to be quite common in other animals, but this turtle seems to be rare. When I was looking for information, I read some posts in the pet community, and I got the feeling that they are revered.

They have a black diamond pattern on their head, and a pattern on their upper jaw that looks like a mustache (I think not all of them seem to have this mustache pattern). Some with black bellies, some with yellow bellies... quite a variety. They commonly have darker legs than other terrapins.

 Panda is a morph from Texas and has a big dot on its belly. cute.

This drawing took a lot longer than I thought it would haha. Because of complicated pattern...! Another turtle I originally considered drawing was the map turtle, and they look more complicated 😂, so It might be worth the challenge 🔥🔥🔥 But I have another animal idea that I want to draw now, so maybe will draw later.

Thank you!