Fantasy Coloring Pages

Fantasy coloring pages are where nothing has to match real life: a unicorn's mane can take six colors, a dragon can bake bread, and a fairy can sail a curled leaf down a stream. This page gathers every storybook collection on the site in one place, from toddler-sized unicorns to dragon scales that keep an adult busy for an evening, all free to print as PDFs.

The make-believe here sorts into a few kinds:

• Mythical creatures: unicorns, dragons, a griffin, mermaids and a kraken.
• Fairy tales: princesses, castles, knights, a wizard and a genie with his lamp.
• Tiny folk: fairies living among toadstools, tulips and acorn cups.
• Friendly monsters: furry ones at home and a whole school of spooky pupils.
• Adventure: pirate ships, treasure chests and gems in crystal caves.
• Dress-up dreams: ballerinas in famous roles, and cowboys and cowgirls on the range.

Fantasy coloring collections, one creature at a time

Each collection has its own page, its own grid and its own Quick to color and Lots of detail buttons, so a child who only wants dragons can go straight to the dragons. Here they are, the largest first:

• Princess Coloring Pages: Princesses in gowns and tiaras alongside mermaids, ballroom pages with plenty of dress detail to fill.
• Unicorn Coloring Pages: Unicorns bake cupcakes and gaze at the stars with their dragon friends in dreamy scenes for little dreamers.
• Mermaid Coloring Pages: Mermaids combing their hair on a rock, opening a treasure chest or carving a pumpkin on the sand, drawn with big tails and thick lines.
• Dragon Coloring Pages: Baby dragons hatching and fire breathers perched on castle towers, some cute and some fiercely detailed.
• Fairy Coloring Pages: Fairies asleep in tulips and riding garden snails, tiny woodland homes with petals and leaves to color.
• Castle Coloring Pages: Hilltop castles with drawbridges and a dragon on the tower, plus great halls and libraries full of fine detail.
• Ballerina Coloring Pages: Little dancers will recognize their barre lessons, and older ones the Sugar Plum Fairy on a crowded stage.
• Zombie Coloring Pages: Friendly zombies with stitches and big smiles trick or treat, bake cookies and decorate the Christmas tree, cute rather than scary.
• Monster Coloring Pages: Friendly monsters hiding under the bed and sitting in class, funny pages that chase away bedtime fears.
• Pirate Coloring Pages: Treasure chests on the beach and ships in a storm, pirate scenes with rigging and rope for older kids.
• Cowboy Coloring Pages: Saddle up for campfire coffee and a long ride across the prairie, Wild West scenes with spurs and ropes to detail.
• Diamond Coloring Pages: Crystal caves and a dragon's hoard of cut gems, faceted designs for kids who love anything that sparkles.

The grid on this page mixes sheets from all of them. Anything you like can go into your Add to pack selection, and that pack follows you from the unicorns to the pirates.

Unicorns, dragons and a griffin: mythical creature coloring pages

The unicorn coloring pages are mostly domestic. Unicorns sew a patchwork quilt in a rocking chair, plant bulbs in a raised bed, run an ice cream cart and look at the stars through a telescope. A baby unicorn sleeps in a nest of cushions, and another rests on a cloud under a crescent moon.

The dragon coloring pages go from hatchlings cracking their eggs to a knight riding over snowy peaks. Dragons bake bread, light a blacksmith's forge and write with a quill. The two creatures are friends here, sharing a picnic blanket and a board game on a rug.

The dragon collection also brings in a griffin, the creature of Greek and Persian art with a lion's body and an eagle's head and wings. Kids who like it can color the two real animals it is made of in the lion coloring pages and eagle coloring pages.

Where unicorns and dragons come from

The unicorn first appears in the writing of Ctesias, a Greek doctor at the Persian court around 400 BC, who described a one-horned wild ass from India, probably a garbled account of the rhinoceros. In medieval Europe, narwhal tusks were sold as unicorn horns, and the unicorn is still the national animal of Scotland.

The dragon comes in two families. The European dragon has wings, breathes fire and guards gold. The Chinese dragon is long, whiskered and usually wingless, and brings rain and luck. Both are in the dragon collection, and they are colored differently, greens and reds with dark wings for one, red and gold for the other.

Fairy tale coloring pages: princesses, castles and fairies

The princess coloring pages hold the fairy tale cast. A snow princess carries a snowflake wand, a princess holds a crystal ball, another a single high-heeled shoe, and a genie raises a lit lamp. A girl in traditional Chinese dress wears a phoenix headdress, the bird that Chinese art pairs with the dragon.

The castle coloring pages give them somewhere to live, inside and out, with a dragon asleep on a tower and a wizard's tower full of bottles. The fairy coloring pages shrink everything down, with a fairy asleep in a tulip, one riding a snail along a mossy log and another sweeping the doorstep of a house in the roots of a tree.

For the wizard side of the story, the Harry Potter coloring pages bring wands, owls and a school of their own.

Pirates, mermaids and a kraken: sea fantasy coloring pages

The pirate coloring pages sail between history and legend. A captain steers the ship's wheel, a crew rows toward a palm island, and a kraken's tentacle curls around a brick lighthouse. The kraken comes from Scandinavian sailors' tales, and many think the legend grew from sightings of the giant squid. The octopus coloring pages have its real relatives.

Mermaids turn up across the fantasy section: on a barnacled anchor beside a sunken ship, as a carved figurehead on a galleon, on rocks by the sea next to a unicorn, and as a pupil pushed down a school corridor in a wheeled water tank.

The diamond coloring pages add the treasure, with crystal caves, a dragon asleep on a heap of gems and a fairy sitting inside a giant crystal.

Friendly monster and spooky school coloring pages

The monster coloring pages are the gentle end of fantasy. Furry monsters hide under the bed, brush their big square teeth and squeeze into a bed far too small. A school of monster pupils includes a mummy unravelling a bandage in the library, a wolf pupil brushing its fur and a ghost carrying a jack-o'-lantern bag. Around October they sit well beside the Halloween coloring pages.

Ballerinas and cowboys, the dress-up side of fantasy

Two collections in this section are less about magic than about who a child pretends to be. The ballerina coloring pages include the swan, the firebird and the Sugar Plum Fairy, three famous stage roles. The cowboy coloring pages follow cowboys and cowgirls through rodeos, campfires and ranch chores.

Coloring fantasy creatures: scales, manes, wings and gold

The same few tricks work across every fantasy collection.

• Scales: two or three shades of one color, darkest along the spine, lightest on the belly. Leave a sliver of white paper in some scales for shine.
• Manes and tails: pick four or five colors and repeat them in the same order, strand after strand. A fixed sequence looks planned; random colors look messy.
• Wings: color the bones or veins dark and the skin between them pale.
• Gowns: one light shade on the whole dress, then a darker line inside each fold.
• Gold: yellow first, orange on the shadow side, a dot of bare paper on top.

Detailed fantasy sheets for teens and adults

Older colorers usually head for the scaled dragon head, the Chinese dragon above a town of lanterns, the kraken at the lighthouse and the pirate border of ropes and compasses. In each collection, Lots of detail sorts those slow pages first. For pure pattern at the same slow pace, try the adult coloring pages or the mandala coloring pages.

A fantasy story party or a class bestiary

For a birthday or a rainy afternoon, hand each child a different character (a princess, a knight, a dragon, a pirate) and ask them to name it before they color. When the pages are done, lay them in a row on the floor and let the group invent the story that links them.

In class, a bestiary works well:

1. Each student picks a creature and colors it.
2. On the back, they write where it lives, what it eats and one rule for meeting it safely.
3. Pin the pages up side by side, a Chinese dragon next to a European one, and compare.

Printing a fantasy storybook

Staple the finished pages into a storybook in the order the children chose. The free PDFs are drawn at 300 dpi for A4 paper, which takes them at their real size, while a US Letter tray needs fit to page so no wingtip or tail runs off the edge. Creatures from several collections can travel together in one pack, and the printing guide covers the printer dialog. Printing at home or for a whole class costs nothing.