Lion Coloring Pages

These lion coloring pages are drawn as real lions, not cartoons. They open with portraits: a male facing forward with the mane filling the page to its edges, the same head in profile, a lioness with no mane at all and her whisker spots set in rows, and a cub in three quarter view with the faint rosettes newborn lions carry and two oversized paws below.

Around them is the day of a pride. A lion stands side on in short grass with acacias far behind, walks straight towards you through seed heads, lies on a warm slab with lizards along its edge, yawns under a thorn branch, and shakes the rain out of his mane in rings of flying drops. A lion and a lioness rub cheeks in greeting. Two males lie side by side on a rise, one mane long and shaggy, the other short and dark. The pride walks the crest of a hill in single file, and sleeps in a heap of overlapping heads and legs on one rock slab.

The cubs get a good share. One bites the tuft at the end of an adult tail while the tail curls right around it, one practices a stalk towards a beetle on a stone, three drink at a puddle in a rutted track, four climb over a sleeping male with one hanging from his mane, and one tumbles off a low rock with its legs in the air while its mother watches from above. There is also an Asiatic lion, with the shorter mane and the fold of skin along the belly that separate him from his African cousins.

The mane is what decides how long a page takes

This is worth knowing before you print, because it runs against what you would guess. A lion's head looks like the hardest thing here and a whole pride looks like the easiest, and the measurements say the opposite.

The lioness portrait is among the quickest sheets on this page: she has no mane, so her head is a few large fields and a row of whisker spots. The male portraits are the slowest, because a mane is hundreds of overlapping locks and every one of them is its own small shape. Everything else falls between the two, in proportion to how much mane is showing.

So most of this collection sits in the quick band, which the Quick to color button above the grid keeps. These open it:

• Lioness at a Tree
• Lion and Lioness Resting
• Lioness Head

That does not make them a children's collection. A lion on plain ground is one big outline with room inside it, and the time goes into shading the coat rather than staying inside small shapes, which is exactly what a colored pencil is for.

The sheets that take an evening

Lots of detail keeps the other end, where grass and reeds fill the page rather than the animal. The lion pushing through tall elephant grass with only his head above the stems is the densest thing here: every stem is a separate stroke.

• Lion in Tall Grass
• Lion Walking Forward
• Lion in the Reeds

What color is a lion, really?

Lions are not yellow. The coat is tawny, a sandy brown that is paler underneath and on the inside of the legs, and it takes a light layer with a darker pass along the back and the shoulder.

The mane is the interesting part, because its color tells you the lion's age. A young male's mane comes in blond and sandy, barely darker than his coat. It darkens year by year, through russet and brown, and an old, strong male can carry one that is almost black. That is what the sheet with two males side by side is showing: the same animal at two ages. Whatever shade you pick, work outward from the face in strokes that follow each lock, and leave a thin line of paper along the top of every lock. Repeated across the whole mane, those lines are what makes it read as hair rather than a shape.

Three details finish a lion. The tail tuft is dark, nearly black, on every lion including the cubs. The nose is pink in a young lion and darkens with age, so match it to the mane you chose. And the rosettes on a cub's forehead and legs are faint smudges rather than the hard rings of a leopard: put them in a slightly darker tone of the coat, not a different color.

For the Asiatic lion, keep the mane shorter and paler so his ears stay visible, which is the simplest way to tell him apart on paper.

Cubs, and the pages for younger children

The cub sheets are the way in for a five or six year old. The cub biting the curled tail, the one stalking a beetle and the one with a piece of dry wood are each a single round animal on almost empty ground, and a child can finish one without help. The lioness washing a cub between her paws and the lioness leading three cubs along a path work well next to them at the same table.

If a younger child wants something rounder and simpler still, the cat coloring pages are the same animal at a size that fits on a lap.

Printing a savanna set

The pride sheets belong together. The heap of seven on a rock slab, the line walking the crest and the pair lying head to tail tell one afternoon between them, and printed as a set they fill a table for a zoo day or a safari themed birthday. For the rest of that zoo day, the panda coloring pages bring the calmest animal in the park. 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 animal coloring pages or dinosaur 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 so nothing is cut off. The printing guide covers paper and settings, and keep draft mode off so the lines stay properly black.