One real species a week, drawn by hand for my son. The facts worth repeating at dinner, and a wallpaper you’ll keep. Free. No catch.
Turtle Tuesday Club is a free weekly turtle art project. Artist Lee Eisenbarth draws a new turtle every Tuesday for his son Henry. Explore original turtle illustrations, free phone and desktop wallpapers, species trivia, a turtle personality quiz, and conservation spotlights on endangered turtle species. A new turtle art drop arrives every Tuesday at 11:30 AM Eastern.
The project is a planned 53-week series covering sea turtles, freshwater turtles, and tortoises from around the world; 33 editions have been published so far. The personality quiz matches you to one of 8 turtle species. All content is family-friendly and free to download under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Tropical & subtropical coastal waters worldwide. The ultimate zen vegan. Named for the color of their fat, not their shell. They can hold their breath for five hours by slowing their heart rate to one beat every nine minutes.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Coral reefs & tropical coastlines. The reef's quiet bodyguard. Recently discovered to be the first known biofluorescent reptile: they glow neon green and red under UV light.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Eastern United States forests & meadows. Lives a century and builds a mental map of every log and stream in its territory. If relocated, it will try to walk home until it dies.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Ponds, lakes & slow rivers across the Americas. The most popular pet turtle and one of the world's 100 worst invasive species. Adapts to basically any freshwater habitat on the planet.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Mary River, Queensland, Australia. Grows a green algae mohawk and breathes through specialized glands in its cloaca (butt), allowing it to stay submerged for 72 hours.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Open ocean, all tropical & temperate seas. The largest turtle on Earth: 750 to 840 pounds on a typical nesting beach, one on record reported past 2,000. Dives deeper than the Empire State Building is tall on a single breath.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Atlantic, Pacific & Indian Ocean coastlines. Named for its massive head and jaw muscles that crush conchs like party favors. Uses Earth's magnetic field to navigate back to its home beach.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Gulf of Mexico & Atlantic coast. The smallest and rarest sea turtle. Known for the 'arribada' where thousands of females storm the same beach on the same day to nest.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Central Asian steppes & deserts. The first Earth creatures to travel around the Moon and return home alive in 1968, months before Apollo 8.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Data Deficient. Habitat: Northern Australian coastal waters. The homebody of sea turtles. Stays exclusively in Australian waters and doesn't leave the continental shelf.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Ponds, marshes & streams across North America. Vivid red and yellow streaks on dark skin. Their hatchlings can survive being frozen solid through winter, thawing out in spring unharmed.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Tropical regions worldwide. Participates in the arribada: synchronized mass nesting events of up to 500,000 individuals over a few days.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Lakes, rivers & swamps, eastern North America. Virtually unchanged for 40 million years. Can't retract into its shell, so it evolved a legendary bite force instead.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. Can live past 175 years. Their shell shapes helped Charles Darwin form the foundation of the theory of evolution.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Southeastern United States rivers. The largest freshwater turtle in North America. Features a bright pink, worm-shaped lure on its tongue to attract prey.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Rivers, lakes & streams across North America. Flat, leathery, pancake-shaped disc with a snorkel nose. Can absorb oxygen through its skin underwater.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Namaqualand, Northern Cape, South Africa. The world's smallest tortoise: a thumb-sized, black-speckled dweller of South Africa's Namaqualand that hides from predators and heat inside narrow rock cracks.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Southern & southwestern Madagascar. One of the most beautiful tortoises on Earth, a Madagascar endemic with brilliant yellow starbursts radiating from each scute.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Baly Bay region, northwestern Madagascar. One of the rarest tortoises on Earth, a Madagascar endemic whose males wield a plough-like shell spur to flip rivals in breeding-season duels.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles. The second-largest tortoise on Earth. They reshape their island home by grazing, creating specialized 'tortoise turf'.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Dry forests of central Myanmar. A conservation success story, brought back from near extinction through intensive captive breeding programs.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Vulnerable. Habitat: Dry scrub of India, Pakistan & Sri Lanka. Its tall, steeply domed shell is a near-perfect self-righting shape: flip it over and geometry rolls it back onto its feet.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Savannas of eastern & southern Africa. The fourth-largest tortoise on Earth: a gentle savanna grazer in a leopard's coat, built for African heat and drought.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Deserts of Egypt & Libya. The smallest tortoise in the Northern Hemisphere: a palm-sized desert survivor, Critically Endangered and all but gone from Egypt.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Rocky kopjes of Kenya & Tanzania. A flat, flexible tortoise that traded armor for speed: it runs into rock cracks and wedges itself tight instead of hiding in its shell. Critically Endangered.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Sahel & southern edge of the Sahara, northern Africa. The largest tortoise on any mainland and the third largest on Earth: an unhurried Sahel giant that digs burrows up to 15 meters deep. Endangered.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Slow rivers & swamps of eastern Australia. A neck about 60% the length of its shell that folds sideways under the rim, and a musk it releases when alarmed.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Coastal southwestern Madagascar. The smallest spider tortoise, and the only one with no hinge in its belly shell. Critically Endangered in southwestern Madagascar.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Forest edges, clearings & savannas of northern South America. Named for the red scales on its dark legs, and famous in science for one experiment: tortoises that watched another walk around a fence to reach food learned to do it too. The ones that never watched never solved it. It eats fallen fruit, and the seeds come out the other end ready to grow.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Mojave Desert: California, Nevada, Utah & Arizona. Spends at least 95% of its life underground in burrows it digs itself, and its bladder can hold over 40% of its body weight in water. Pick one up and it may empty that store to get away from you. So please don't.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Least Concern. Habitat: Slow rivers & swamps of the Amazon Basin & eastern Guianas. Looks like a piece of bark with leaves stuck to it, and breathes through its snorkel snout. When a fish comes close, it opens its mouth and expands its throat so fast the fish is pulled in and swallowed whole.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Critically Endangered. Habitat: Rocky mountain streams of southern China & Southeast Asia. Its head is too big to pull into its shell, so it comes armored, with a hooked beak. It climbs steep rock in cool mountain streams on long claws and a tail strong enough to hold its whole weight.
Conservation status (IUCN Red List): Endangered. Habitat: Clear, sandy rivers of the Pascagoula system, Mississippi. Fine, swirling lines on its shell look like the contours on a map. Females grow far bigger than males, with broad jaws for clams, in one river system in Mississippi.
Turtle Tuesday Club is a free weekly turtle art project created by artist Lee Eisenbarth, who draws a new turtle every Tuesday for his son Henry. The project began on March 4, 2026 and runs as a 53-week series spanning sea turtles, freshwater turtles, and tortoises from around the world. 33 editions have been published so far. Every illustration is free to download under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).