Lisa Frank Coloring Pages

Anyone who went to school in the 1980s or 1990s remembers the folders: a leopard with rainbow spots, a unicorn under a neon sky, dolphins leaping over a sunset. These Lisa Frank coloring pages are drawn in that spirit, a cute animal in the middle and a background of rainbows, stars, hearts or zigzags all around it, so the page is ready for the brightest markers you own.

The unicorns come first: a unicorn head with a long flowing mane among stars and crescent moons, a unicorn foal on a background of zigzags, a unicorn standing on a cloud under a rainbow, a unicorn and a pegasus crossing manes inside a ring of stars, and a badge of a unicorn horn and wings wrapped in ribbons. The dolphins leap inside a border of hearts, cross over a rainbow above curling waves and jump through a hoop of flowers, and a whale spouts a fountain of stars.

The animals are the ones the style is famous for. A leopard cub stretched along a branch, a tiger cub's striped face in a border of stars, a lion cub in front of sunburst rays, a panda hugging a heart, a koala with a flower behind its ear, a penguin in a striped scarf, a horse galloping under a rainbow, a foal and a fawn in a flower meadow, a bear cub with balloons, a bunny with a swirl lollipop and a frog in a crown. The kittens and puppies are here too: a kitten in a spotted teacup, a kitten in a hot air balloon, a kitten face in a star frame, a puppy in a heart-print bag, and a kitten and puppy with bows. Some pages are pure pattern: a peacock with its tail fanned, a patterned butterfly, a seahorse, a sea turtle, a hummingbird, a mermaid tail in a shell, an owl on the moon, a cluster of patterned hearts, two ice cream cones, a sundae and a pair of roller skates with star wheels.

Where the style came from

Lisa Frank is an American artist who started her company in Arizona in 1979. Through the 1980s and 1990s her stickers, folders, pencil cases and binders were everywhere in American schools: animals drawn with big shining eyes, in colors no real animal has, against backgrounds that glowed like a neon sign. A purple tiger, a pink leopard, a rainbow dolphin. Children collected the stickers in albums and traded them at recess.

The style is back, partly because the children who carried those folders now have children of their own. A parent and a child can sit down to the same page here, one remembering it and the other seeing it for the first time.

Coloring it the way the folders looked

The rule of the style is simple: no animal gets its real colors. The leopard's spots can be blue and pink, the tiger can be purple with teal stripes, the dolphin can shade from turquoise to violet along its body.

The effect comes from blending. Instead of one color per shape, color each animal in two or three colors that run into each other: yellow into orange into pink on a lion's mane, blue into purple on a dolphin's back. Markers blend best while the ink is still wet, so work one area at a time. Colored pencils blend by layering: lay the lighter color first, then the darker one over half of it.

Two more details make the page look right. Leave a white highlight in each eye, a small spot of bare paper, because those shining eyes are the signature of the style. And try coloring the background dark, navy, deep purple or even black, with the stars, hearts or rainbows in bright colors on top. Neon colors look twice as bright against a dark sky.

Which pages for which colorist

These pages lean toward the busy side, because the backgrounds carry so much: stars, hearts, zigzags and rainbow bands fill every corner around the animal. The simplest keep a single animal and a light background, and suit a child of five or six. Quick to color, above the grid, starts with:

• Whale spouting stars
• Sundae in front of a rainbow
• Dolphins leaping over a rainbow

The densest are the pattern pages, where scales, coral, shell panels and rings of stars each ask for their own color. They are the ones teenagers and adults pick for an evening with gel pens. Lots of detail opens on:

• Mermaid tail in a shell
• Seahorse among bubbles and seaweed
• Patterned sea turtle over coral

A folder, a sticker album and a 90s party

The original designs lived on school supplies, and the finished pages still can. Color a page, trim it to size and glue it to the front of a plain folder or notebook, then cover it with clear packing tape: it becomes a folder that would have caused a stampede in a 1994 classroom. Smaller animals, cut out with a white border, make stickers for an album or a water bottle.

For a 90s-themed party, print a different animal for each guest and put out the brightest markers, gel pens and highlighters you can find. The roller skates and the patterned hearts are the pages for teenagers and adults at the same table.

Printing a neon set

These are free PDFs at 300 dpi on A4 paper. On A4, print at full size; on US Letter, "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent and nothing gets cut. The printing guide shows how. Add to pack puts several pages into one file for a party. More rainbows and horns are in the unicorn coloring pages and the rainbow coloring pages, and the kawaii coloring pages keep the cute faces coming.