Monster Coloring Pages

Nobody here is scary. These monster coloring pages take the creature from under the bed and give it a normal day, and most of the jokes come from a monster being the wrong size for a house. A round shaggy monster steps out of the wardrobe with the coat hangers still swinging, a lumpy one is wedged under the bed next to the slippers and the torch, and another has climbed into a bed far too small for it, striped socks hanging over the end.

The rest of the house is theirs too. A striped monster stands on a stool to brush a mouth of square teeth while the sink foams over, a six-armed one juggles the kettle and the breakfast plates, and a wide one scrubs its feet in a tin bath in the garden under the washing line. A horned monster sits still while a boy polishes its horns, a one-eyed one reads a bedtime story on the rug, and two more play ghosts under a sheet in a storm of pillow feathers. A monster family shares a bowl of popcorn in one armchair, a small monster measures a tall one against the door frame, and a monster with crumbs on its chin finds the biscuit tin empty.

Then there is the school. Its pupils are the classic monsters grown young: a mummy unravelling one endless bandage across the library floor, a wolf brushing its coat at the lockers, a pupil with bolts in the neck styling tall striped hair, a mermaid pushed down the corridor in a water tank on wheels, a bat-winged girl trying on hats at a market stall, a hooded ghost carrying a jack-o'-lantern down the steps. There is a lab lesson, a school photo on the front steps and a sewing room with a patchwork skirt on the dummy.

One monster, or a whole scene

A monster is a big rounded body with a thick outline, and when it is alone on the page it goes quickly, fur or no fur. The furry three-eyed portrait, the monster blowing up balloons and the bat-winged pupil at its desk are a few large shapes each. Quick to color, above the grid, keeps that end. These open it:

• A furry three-eyed monster portrait
• A lumpy monster hiding under the bed
• A bat-winged pupil sitting down at a desk

They make a good first page for a four or five year old, because the outline is thick, the shapes are large and there is no wrong color for a creature that does not exist.

School corridors and library shelves

Lots of detail gathers the other end, where several pupils share the page or the school fills in around them. The class photo on the front steps, the mermaid wheeled down the corridor in her tank, a pupil climbing the stairs behind a tower of books: these are the sheets for an older child or an adult with a sharp pencil.

• A mummy pupil unravelling a long bandage
• A mermaid pupil pushed along in a water tank
• A cat pupil carrying a tower of books upstairs

Where the monster school pupils come from

Each pupil borrows the one feature that makes its monster recognizable, and some of those features have a history worth telling while the pencils are out. The bolts in the neck are not in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, published in 1818, which barely describes the creature at all. They come from the makeup Jack Pierce designed for Boris Karloff in the 1931 film, and they stuck so well that a flat head and two bolts now mean "Frankenstein" everywhere. The mummy comes from real Egyptian linen wrappings, which were wound on in many layers of long strips, so a pupil trailing one long bandage is closer to the truth than it looks. The werewolf is older still, a shape-changer in European folk tales for centuries before any film.

For coloring, this means you can go two ways. Keep the classic cues (green-gray skin and dark hair for the bolted pupil, off-white bandages with a little yellow and brown for age, a gray or brown wolf) and the monster reads at a glance. Or ignore them entirely, which is what the house monsters invite.

Picking colors for a creature that does not exist

With no real animal to match, the risk is the opposite of usual: a monster colored in eight bright colors turns into noise. Choose two or three colors per monster and stick to them. One main color for the body, a second for the belly, horns or spots, and a third for small accents like claws and the inside of the mouth. Colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel, purple with yellow or blue with orange, make a monster pop off a plain floor.

Fur deserves one trick. Color it in short strokes that follow the direction of each tuft, then go back over the tips with a darker shade of the same color. Leave a little paper showing between strokes and the coat looks shaggy rather than flat. For stripes and spots, color the whole body first in the lighter shade, then add the pattern on top: it is faster than coloring around every spot, and the colors blend at the edges instead of leaving white gaps.

A monster for the bedroom door

Plenty of families use a friendly monster to take the fear out of the one a child imagines in the dark. The sheets set around bedtime suit that well: the monster reading a story, the one tucked into the tiny bed, the one caught under the bed with a torch beside it. Let the child color one in whatever colors they like, give it a name, and tape it to the bedroom door or above the bed as a night guard. A monster you have colored yourself is hard to be afraid of.

Monsters also make easy party entertainment, especially in October. Print a mixed pile for a monster themed birthday or a Halloween afternoon with the Halloween coloring pages and pumpkin coloring pages, and press Add to pack under each drawing to print the whole selection as one PDF. The pack stays in your browser while you move between collections, so a few dragon coloring pages can join the same print. Older kids who like their creatures a little spookier will find them in the Five Nights at Freddy's coloring pages.

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.