Cross Coloring Pages

These cross coloring pages come in two kinds, and it is worth knowing which you are printing before you press the button.

The first kind is the plain cross: one large shape with a single idea attached. A cloth draped over both arms in broad folds. A crown resting on the crossing with an empty banner below. A lamb lying at the foot with a shepherd crook against the upright. Two branches lashed together with cord, buds breaking along the wood. A cross on a hilltop between two olive trees with a path winding up to it. These have very few areas inside them, and a young child can finish one in a sitting.

The second kind is the pattern cross, and it is closer to a mandala than to a children's sheet. Celtic knotwork looping through a ring at the crossing. A panel of stained glass held by thick leading. Chevrons running the length of both arms with a rosette at the center. A lattice of diamonds, a field of mosaic tiles, a running wave border with a sunburst behind. A cross built entirely out of joined hearts.

Between the two sit the ones with plants and creatures: lilies with their stems crossing at the foot, a climbing rose with three open blooms, interlaced vines hung with grapes, a bed of tulips with a butterfly on the upright, four doves with their feathers in long flat rows, a garland of daisies looped between the arms, and a cross of wheat sheaves bound with twine.

For a young child, and for a whole afternoon

Quick to color above the grid keeps the plain end. These open it:

• Draped Cross
• Cross at Sunrise
• Crown and Cross

Lots of detail keeps the pattern end and the planted ones, where the work spreads right across the page:

• Vine Cross
• Cross and Tulips
• Cross in the Lilies

One printout can serve a mixed table, which is unusual. Print two or three from each band and let people choose. The bands measure the same thing on every collection on this site, so the split is not a matter of taste.

There is no wrong color on these pages

Worth saying, because most subjects on this site have a right answer and this one does not. A lion is tawny and a mallard has a bottle green head, but a cross is wood, stone, metal, glass or gold depending on which one you are looking at, and none of these drawings insists. That makes the collection unusually free, and a good one to hand someone who freezes when a page has a correct answer.

A few of the sheets do reward a particular approach:

• The stained glass cross: pick three or four jewel colors and repeat them around the panel rather than giving every pane its own. Leave the thick leading white, or go over it in dark gray at the end. That black web is what makes glass read as glass.
• The celtic knotwork: follow one strand all the way round with a single color, going under and over as it does, then do the next strand in a second color. Coloring the gaps instead is the common mistake and the knot disappears.
• The lilies and the doves: leave them as bare paper. White is the point, and a very pale gray along one edge is enough to keep them from vanishing.
• The wheat cross: one yellow laid flat, then a darker pass along the underside of each ear. The twine at the center in a plain brown.
• The palms: two greens, the lighter one on the fronds catching the light, and the ribbon in whatever color you like.

Colored pencils suit the pattern crosses better than markers, because the shapes inside a knot or a mosaic are small. The colored pencil guide compares sets.

Where each kind of cross comes from

The crosses in this collection are drawn from real ones, and they are not interchangeable.

The Latin cross, with a long lower arm, is the plainest and the most widely used. The Greek cross has four arms of equal length and fits inside a square, which is why it turns up in mosaics and on flags. The Celtic cross adds a ring around the crossing point; stone versions in Ireland and Scotland use it partly as a brace, and the knotwork carved into them is what makes the pattern sheets in this collection dense enough to take an evening.

The budded cross ends each arm in three rounds. The cross of two lashed branches is not a formal design at all but what people make when they make one themselves, and it is the sheet that suits a very young child.

A note on the knotwork, since it is the part people get stuck on: a Celtic knot is one continuous line that never ends. If you color it as an over-and-under weave, alternating which strand passes on top at every crossing, the illusion holds. Color it as separate blocks and it falls apart. Follow one strand with a fingertip before picking up a pencil and the rest is easy.

Not a single word on any sheet

None of these drawings carries lettering, and two of them leave a space for it on purpose: the banner under the crown and the open book on its stand are both blank. If you want a name, a date or a verse on the page, that is where it goes, in your own handwriting, which looks better than anything printed anyway. They make the collection usable for a christening, a first communion, a confirmation or a memory card.

The lamb, the loaves and fish, the palms, the wheat and the vine are all here too, so a set can follow a lesson rather than being handed out at random.

Press Add to pack under each drawing you want and print the selection as one PDF. The pack stays in your browser while you move between collections, so a few Easter coloring pages can join the same print.

The sheets are free printable PDFs at 300 dpi, with no watermark and no account. They are A4: print at actual size on A4, or choose "fit to page" on US Letter. The printing guide covers paper and settings, and the license covers church, school and club use.