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Red Salamander

Red Salamander line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

Red Salamander full color illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The Red Salamander was completed on 12.3.2011. I'm slowly making my way through drawing all of the North American salamanders and newts. Salamanders are, well to be honest, one of the easier animals to draw. Usually, there is little texture to their skin, they are uniform in coloration and have no complex patterns to draw. For this reason, I can usually crank out a drawing of one in a day, like I did with this Red Salamander. The drawing is based on a photo by Todd Pierson.

Information about the Red Salamander:

The Red Salamander is an amphibian member of the order Caudata, which are salamanders. They are native to North America, and can be found in a variety of habitats including temperate forests, small creeks, ponds, marshes, freshwater springs and slow moving rivers. They grow to be about 4-6 inches long. The family they belong to - Plethodontidae - are salamanders without lungs and instead respires through their skin. Pseudotriton ruber is perhaps one of the most primitive plethodontids, and therefore considered very important by some as a means to better understand how species evolve. It is, however, on the decline due to habitat destruction and global climate change.