Shark Coloring Pages

Children who like sharks tend to know their names, and they notice when a hammerhead is just a shark with a funny head. These free printable shark coloring pages draw each species as itself. A great white shark swims straight toward you with its rows of teeth, and another bursts out of the sea. A whale shark glides near the surface with its spotted back, and a second one passes a scuba diver to show how big it really is. A school of hammerheads crosses open water, a tiger shark cruises over seagrass, a mako leaps clear of the waves, and a basking shark swims with its enormous mouth wide open.

Some sharks are easy to miss. An angel shark lies half buried in the sand, a wobbegong disappears against a rocky reef, and a nurse shark rests on the sea floor beside a ledge. A thresher shark sweeps its long tail through a school of fish, a lemon shark noses through mangrove roots with remoras riding along, and a tiny pup grows inside its egg case. The rest of the collection is sharks having a good day: napping in a kelp hammock, floating on a pool ring in sunglasses, building a sandcastle, camping on the sea floor or floating through space in a bubble helmet.

Which shark pages for which age?

Quick to color filters the grid down to the big-shape sheets, gentlest first.

• A great white shark breaching
• A school of hammerhead sharks
• A great white shark swimming toward you

Many of the realistic sharks sit at this end, because a shark is one long smooth shape with a few fins. That makes them easy to fill for young children and good for older ones who want to shade a body properly. If big teeth are too much for a small child, start with the friendly sharks instead: the one on the pool float, the one asleep in its hammock, the sandcastle builder and the camper. The middle of the collection adds patterns and props, like the spotted zebra shark, the camouflaged wobbegong and the shark chef with its tray of cupcakes, which suit children from about six.

Shark coloring pages for adults

Lots of detail keeps the other end, where roots, kelp, coral and patterns fill the page with small areas. The densest open the band.

• A lemon shark in the mangroves
• A shark lifeguard with binoculars
• A shark knitting a scarf for a sea snake

The lemon shark in the mangroves is a slow page, every root its own shape, and so is the leopard shark over the kelp with its spots. The wobbegong and the zebra shark in the middle of the collection are good for anyone who likes patterns, since the camouflage and spots are drawn as separate shapes to fill one by one with fine pencils (the colored pencil guide compares sets).

What color is a shark, really?

Most sharks are dark on top and pale underneath. Seen from above they blend with the deep water, and seen from below they match the bright surface, which is why a great white is gray on the back and white on the belly. A mako is a bright metallic blue on top, and a lemon shark is a yellowish brown that matches the sandy shallows where it lives. A blacktip reef shark is named for the black tips on its fins, so color those last.

Patterns tell sharks apart. A whale shark is dark blue-gray covered in pale spots and stripes, and no two whale sharks have exactly the same pattern, so a child can invent one and still be right. A young tiger shark has dark stripes that fade as it grows up. A leopard shark has dark saddles and spots on a gray-brown body, and a wobbegong is mottled brown, the colors of the reef it hides on.

Megalodon and shark teeth

The megalodon was a giant shark that is now extinct, known mostly from its fossil teeth. It lived millions of years after the last dinosaurs, although sharks as a group are far older than dinosaurs. The megalodon page shows it chasing a whale smaller than itself, and the tooth page puts a megalodon tooth next to an ordinary shark tooth, which gives a sense of scale before a trip to a beach known for fossil teeth. For creatures that really did live alongside the dinosaurs, see the dinosaur coloring pages. The sea turtles in the turtle coloring pages are another very old line, if a younger one, and what a shark actually hunts is drawn in the fish coloring pages.

Countershading, and why every shark is two colors

Look at any shark on these pages and you will see the same thing: dark on top, pale underneath, with a hard line where they meet. That is countershading, and it is worth coloring deliberately.

Seen from above against the dark sea floor, the shark's back disappears. Seen from below against the bright surface, its white belly disappears. It works in both directions at once, which is why nearly every open-water fish, and a good many birds, are built the same way. Color a shark one flat gray and it stops being a shark; color the back slate gray, the belly bare white paper, and blend a short way where they meet, and it looks right immediately.

The other details are just as specific. Shark skin is not smooth: it is covered in tiny tooth-like scales that feel like sandpaper one way and silk the other, and they cut drag in the water. The gill slits are always five to seven, never three or four. Teeth grow in rows and are replaced continuously, which is why fossil shark teeth are so common.

And the hammerhead, which children always ask about: the wide head spreads its electrical sensors over a bigger area, so it can find fish buried in sand.

Sorting sharks in the classroom

Sharks do not all hunt the same way, which makes a simple sorting activity. The filter feeders swim with their mouths open: the whale shark and the basking shark. The bottom dwellers wait on the sea floor: the nurse shark, the angel shark, the wobbegong and the zebra shark. The fast hunters chase their food: the great white, the mako, the tiger shark, the hammerheads and the thresher with its tail. Give each child one shark, color it, and let the class build three groups on the wall. The egg case page adds a question to finish on: not every shark is born the same way.

Press Add to pack under any drawing to set it aside, then print everything you picked as one PDF. The pack keeps your picks as you move between collections, so the ocean coloring pages, with whales, octopuses, a hammerhead over a reef and a whole coral reef, can go in the same print, and so can a few more animal coloring pages.

A4 pages: 100 % scale on A4, "fit to page" on US Letter, and draft mode turned off so nothing prints faint. The printing guide has the rest. Every sheet is a free printable PDF at 300 dpi.