Watercolor: Western Painted Turtle - 14" x 10"

I got interested in turtles when reading a book on turtles to Evangeline a couple of weeks before Christmas. The Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) is the most widespread native turtle in North America. Of the four subspecies, the Western Painted Turtle (C. p. bellili) is the most colorful, with a bright yellow and red pattern on its bottom shell or plastron. Its upper shell or carapace, on the other hand, is pretty dull. The Western Painted Turtle occurs primarily from Kansas and Missouri north to southern Canada, west of the Mississippi, and across Montana and Idaho into Washington and Oregon.

This painting depicts the turtle, a cold-blooded animal, emerging from a lake to bask in the sun to warm its body for several hours before foraging. It may repeat this behavior two or three more times in the day. 181220. Watercolor, 14" x 10". In a private collection: A. Roberts.