Heart Coloring Pages

A heart is the easiest shape in the catalogue to draw and the hardest to make interesting. These free printable heart coloring pages solve it two ways: by filling the shape with something worth coloring, and by hiding the shape inside something else.

So there is a heart cut into jigsaw pieces with one lifted out of the corner, a heart woven from broad paper strips, a heart divided into nine patchwork squares of stripes and checks, a heart drawn entirely in curls, and a maze of winding corridors with a small heart at the center. And then the hidden ones: a pond shaped like a heart with two fish in it, an island with three palms, a hedge clipped into a heart with an opening through the middle and a bench in front, a tree whose leaves grow into the shape, two swans whose necks make the sides.

The fastest collection on the site

Most of these sheets fall in the quick band, which almost never happens. A heart is one large shape, so even the patterned ones finish in a few minutes.

Quick to color above the grid keeps them and opens on the simplest.

• A heart-shaped maze
• A heart inside a paper doily
• A heart drawn in one looping line

That makes this the collection to print when you need thirty sheets for a table of small children and want all of them finished at roughly the same time.

Making a flat shape look round

• Press harder at the outside edge and in the dip at the top, lighter in the middle of each lobe. Two tones of one color, and the heart stops looking like a sticker.
• One color per heart, not six. On the patchwork and the twelve-heart sheets, pick three colors and repeat them in rotation across the page.
• Leave a small patch of bare paper near the top left of each lobe. It reads as a shine.
• Red is harder than pink. A red pencil pressed flat goes waxy. Build it up in two passes, or use pink first and red over the top.
• Backgrounds go pale. The hearts are the strongest thing on every page and should stay so.

The ones to write on

Some sheets are deliberately left open: the scalloped heart frame, with an empty middle inside a border of small scallops, and the banner. They are there for a name, a message, a drawing or a photograph, and they are the sheets to print for a card, a place setting at a table or a note to put in a lunchbox.

The lettered sheets spell out I LOVE YOU, once on a cloth banner between two poles topped with heart finials, and once on a ribbon across a patterned heart. They are the only sheets in the collection with words on them.

Hearts for a February table, and for the rest of the year

The February sheets are obvious: the roses, the locket, the lollipop, the waffle with berries. The rest work any week of the year. The maze and the jigsaw are puzzles first and hearts second. The chalked hopscotch grid, numbered to ten with a heart drawn beside it, is a playground sheet. The heart-shaped pizza cut into six slices is a food sheet.

The Valentine's coloring pages carry the cards and the cupids, and the flower coloring pages share the roses.

A garland, a window and a classroom postbox

A heart is the easiest shape to cut out, which makes this the collection that leaves the page most often.

The garland is the obvious one and still the best. Color six or eight hearts in a repeating pair of colors, cut them out, and sew straight through the middle of each with a needle and thread so they hang flat and turn. Across a doorway it takes ten minutes; across a classroom it takes a morning and everybody has contributed.

The nested-hearts sheet is better cut than colored. Cut along each outline and you end up with a set of rings that hang inside each other from a single thread, which looks far more complicated than it was.

For February in a class: cut the scalloped frame sheet out, glue it to the front of a shoebox with a slot cut in the lid, and the postbox is done. Each child colors a small heart as a card, writes a name on the back and posts it. The frame sheet exists because it is blank in the middle, so the box can carry a name too.

And the one that lasts: a colored heart glued inside a folded card, with the child's handwriting underneath, is the thing a grandparent keeps in a drawer for twenty years. Print on 160 gsm card if it is meant to survive.

The Valentine's coloring pages carry the cards and the cupids, the flower coloring pages share the roses, and the mandala coloring pages carry on the symmetry.

Symmetry, and how to color it without it going wrong

Nearly every sheet here is symmetrical down a vertical line, and that turns out to be harder to color than it looks.

The eye is unusually good at spotting a broken symmetry, and it notices a heart whose left side is darker than its right even when it cannot say what is wrong. Two habits fix it.

Work in pairs, not in halves. Color the left lobe, then immediately the right one, in the same direction and with the same pressure. Do not finish one whole side and then start the other, because your hand tires and the second side comes out lighter.

Turn the page instead of turning your hand. Rotate the paper so every stroke is made in the direction your wrist prefers. It sounds fussy and it is the single biggest improvement available on any symmetrical design.

On the patterned sheets, the useful trick is to count the repeats first. A heart divided into nine squares takes three colors in rotation; twelve hearts in four rows take three or four. Choosing a number that divides evenly means the pattern closes rather than trailing off.

The mandala coloring pages run on the same principle at a larger scale, and the butterfly coloring pages are the other place on this site where symmetry does the work.

For anyone who wants an hour on one page

Lots of detail sorts the opposite way and opens on the page with the most to fill.

• A heart made of open roses
• A heart made of butterflies in flight
• A scalloped heart frame

The rose heart is the one to keep for an evening: two dozen spiraled roses packed into the shape, each one its own small spiral to work through. The fairground wheel and the maze are close behind. For more symmetry at that weight, the mandala coloring pages are next door.

Each sheet is a free A4 PDF at 300 dpi. Print at 100 % scale on A4, or choose "fit to page" on US Letter; the printing guide has the settings. Press Add to pack under the sheets you want and print them as one PDF.