Ledgebay does not sell a stock turtle design, so if a numbered turtle canvas is what you want, there are two honest routes: have one made from your own photograph, or paint an ocean scene instead. This page covers both, plus what actually makes a turtle hard to paint and one thing you should never do with a real one.
Route one: a custom kit from your own photo
A custom paint by numbers kit takes a photograph you send in and turns it into a printed canvas with every section numbered, plus a matching set of paints. If you have a good turtle photograph, whether from a snorkeling trip, an aquarium visit or a pet box turtle in the garden, this is the only way to get exactly that turtle on a canvas.
It comes in 12x16, 16x20 and 18x24, framed or unframed, and it is printed in the USA rather than drop-shipped from overseas. A few things to know before you send a photo in:
- Light matters more than resolution. A turtle photographed in clear light, with the shell pattern readable, converts well. An underwater shot through green water usually does not, because the whole image sits in one narrow band of color and the printed sections end up nearly identical to each other.
- Get close. A turtle filling a third of the frame gives the print enough to work with. A small turtle in a wide seascape becomes a handful of tiny sections.
- Expect a painting, not a photocopy. The finished canvas looks like a painting of your photo. Scute edges will be simplified, and that is what makes it look like art rather than a print.
Route two: paint the water instead
If what you actually want is that calm, coastal feeling on a wall, the catalog covers it well even without a turtle in it. Ocean and water designs include a sunrise over breaking surf with two white chairs on the sand, a pier at sunset with gulls over the waves, and a moonlit bay with a canoe pulled up on the shore.
Be Still, above, is one of the better first kits in the range: broad areas of sky and water, no fussy detail, and a palette that stays in one warm family. Seaside Escape and Seaside Paradise are the more demanding coastal designs, mostly because of the wave edges.
What makes a turtle hard to paint
The shell is the whole problem, and it is worth understanding why before you start.
A turtle's shell is not a shed-able house. It is bone, fused to the spine and ribs, covered in keratin plates called scutes. The upper half is the carapace and the lower half the plastron. The turtle's organs sit inside it, which is why a turtle cannot leave its shell and why the shell is living tissue with a nerve supply, not a fingernail.
For a painter, that structure means two things. The scutes are a tiling pattern that follows the curve of a dome, so each plate is a different shape depending on where it sits, and getting that curve right is what makes a turtle read as three-dimensional rather than flat. And the pattern within each scute usually radiates outward from one corner, so brush strokes that follow that direction look right and strokes across it do not.
On a numbered canvas both of those decisions are already made for you, which is genuinely most of the difficulty removed. What is left is keeping the tones separated. Turtle shells are mostly browns, olives and yellows sitting close together, so rinse the brush properly between pots or the whole shell collapses into one color.
Sea turtles, correctly
An earlier version of this article got several of these wrong, so here they are straight.
- There are seven species of sea turtle: green, loggerhead, leatherback, hawksbill, Kemp's ridley, olive ridley and flatback. All seven are marine. There is no such thing as a sea turtle that lives on land.
- The land ones are tortoises. Tortoises have domed shells and stumpy, elephantine feet for walking. Sea turtles have flattened shells and flippers, and cannot pull their heads into their shells at all. Freshwater turtles sit in between.
- Sea turtles are not pets. Every sea turtle species is protected under US law and international trade agreements. Keeping, buying or collecting one is illegal. Some freshwater turtles and tortoises can be legally kept, and they are the long-lived ones people are usually thinking of.
- Reptiles commonly carry Salmonella, including healthy ones with no symptoms. That is a real reason to wash your hands after handling a turtle or its tank, not a reason to avoid turtles.
- There are roughly 350 species of turtle and tortoise worldwide, and a good many of them are threatened.
Never paint a real turtle's shell
The previous version of this page gave instructions for painting a live turtle's shell. That advice was wrong and it has been removed. Wildlife agencies, including Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, have asked people repeatedly to stop doing it.
The shell is living tissue. Paint blocks the sunlight a turtle needs to make vitamin D, which over time causes metabolic bone disease. It can trap moisture and bacteria underneath, seals a surface that is meant to breathe, exposes the animal to solvents it absorbs, and removes the camouflage that keeps it from being eaten. Painting a wild turtle is illegal in many states.
If you want a painted turtle, paint one on canvas.
Getting started
If you have never worked on a numbered canvas, the beginner's guide covers how the sections and numbering work, and turning a photo into a paint by numbers canvas covers what makes a photograph convert well.
Every kit arrives with the canvas rolled in a tube rather than folded, so there are no creases to flatten, paints vacuum-sealed so they arrive moist, brushes in a range of sizes and an 11x17 printout of the design to work from. Framed sizes include a wooden tabletop easel.
Finished canvases from other customers are in the customer gallery.
