Squirrel Coloring Pages

These squirrel coloring pages start with two portraits that are worth putting side by side, because they are two different animals. The red squirrel faces forward with long pointed tufts standing up from its ears and its tail curled behind it. The gray squirrel is drawn from the side with small rounded ears and a broad brush of a tail. The tufts are the whole difference, and once you have seen them you cannot unsee them.

After that it is a year of squirrel life. One sits up holding a hazelnut in both paws, another stuffs its cheeks at the foot of a beech among split husks, and a baby lies curled asleep in a nest of moss inside a hollow trunk. There is a leap between two branches with acorns falling below, a pinecone being dragged along a branch, two squirrels chasing each other in a spiral around a trunk, and a drey of woven twigs wedged in a fork with a face looking out over the rim.

Then the garden, which is where squirrels get interesting. One hangs upside down from a gutter to reach a pear on a windowsill, one raids a bowl of nuts on a garden table, one digs a bulb out of a plant pot with the trowel still stuck in beside it, one crosses a telephone wire above the rooftops, and one has got into the attic and is picking its way over the stacked boxes. Outside there are conkers on a park path, a pumpkin to sit on, a basket of apples with the ladder still against the tree, and a cat watching through the glass while a nut is eaten on the window ledge.

The animal alone, or the animal in a place

The measurements say the same thing here as they do for ducks, and it is worth knowing before you print. A squirrel on its own is one of the simplest things to color: a smooth body, a big tail, two paws and a nut. The hazelnut sheet and the gray portrait are about as quick as this site gets.

Quick to color above the grid keeps that end. These open it:

• Squirrel with a Hazelnut
• Grey Squirrel in Profile
• Squirrel in the Rain

The work is in the places, not the animals. A hanging basket of flowers, an attic of boxes, a stack of firewood with every log drawn end on in rings, a drey built from woven twigs, a mossy wall of stone courses.

• Squirrel in the Flowers
• Squirrel in the Attic
• Squirrel on the Woodpile

Several of those are dense in a particular way that suits an evening rather than a challenge: they repeat one small shape many times, the log ends, the twigs, the petals, the stones. There is nothing fiddly to get right, just a lot of it, which is the restful kind of coloring. Sharp colored pencils hold up better than markers over that much repetition, and the colored pencil guide compares sets.

Red squirrel, gray squirrel

Getting these two right is the most satisfying thing on the page, and neither is the color you would guess from the name.

• A red squirrel is not red. It runs from a light gingery chestnut to a deep rust brown, with a cream or white belly and a clear line where the two meet. The ear tufts are usually darker than the body. Its tail often bleaches pale, almost blonde, by late summer, so a tail lighter than the back is correct, not a mistake.
• A gray squirrel is not plain gray. It is a soft gray with a brown or gingery saddle along the back and shoulders, a white belly, and a tail that looks silvered because the hairs are tipped with white. Color the tail gray and leave a fringe of bare paper all along its edge and it will look right immediately.
• Both have large dark eyes with a pale ring around them. Leave that ring as bare paper. It is a small thing that does more for the face than anything else.

The nuts have their own answers. Acorns are green when fresh and brown when ripe, and the cup is always a different tone from the nut, so pick two browns rather than one. A conker is a glossy mahogany inside a spiked case that is lime green, which makes that sheet the most colorful one here. Pinecones work best with one brown laid flat and a darker pass along the lower edge of each scale.

What the tail is for

A squirrel's tail is roughly the length of its body, and it earns that.

It is a balance pole on a branch and a rudder in mid-air. It is a parachute: squirrels routinely survive falls that should kill them. It is a blanket, curled over the back in cold weather, and a parasol, held up in hot. And it is a signal, flicked in a particular rhythm to warn other squirrels of a threat on the ground.

That is why the tail on these pages is drawn as big as it is, and why coloring it flat wastes the best part of the drawing. The fur runs outwards from the spine of the tail in long strokes, it is paler at the tips, and light passes through it at the edges.

Two more things children like knowing. Squirrels bury far more nuts than they dig up, partly because they forget and partly because they bury decoys when they think they are being watched; the forgotten ones become trees, which makes squirrels accidental foresters. And their front teeth never stop growing, which is why they gnaw constantly.

Red and gray squirrels differ by more than color: reds have ear tufts in winter and a slimmer build, grays are heavier with no tufts. Both appear here.

The seasons, and what to print when

The collection runs right through the year, so a set can match the month. Autumn has the conkers, the pumpkin, the orchard basket and the fallen leaves. Winter has snow shaken from a tail with a robin watching, a buried cache being dug out with paw prints tracking back to the fence, a knitted hat, and two squirrels sharing a pinecone on an icy rail. Spring and summer have the bulb, the birdbath, the hanging basket and the broad leaf held up against the rain.

More of the same woodland is in the fall coloring pages, and squirrels turn up again decorating the tree in the Christmas collection.

Tap Add to pack under the ones you want and the whole set prints as one PDF. The pack follows you between collections, which means a woodland set can take in the animal coloring pages too.

These download as free 300 dpi PDFs, unwatermarked, with nothing to sign up for. 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.