Summer Coloring Pages

The long summer break has a rhythm: a morning at the beach or the pool, then the hot middle of the afternoon when everyone comes back inside, sunburnt and bored. That is when a stack of pages earns its place. These free printable summer coloring pages start outside, with children building a sandcastle with towers and a moat, running through a garden sprinkler, snorkeling among fish and floating down a river on inflatable rings, and move on to the things that make the season: a tent pitched by a lake with marshmallows over the fire, a Ferris wheel and a carousel at the fair, a camper van parked by the coast.

The sea has its own corner. A sea turtle swims over a coral reef, a dolphin leaps beside a sailboat, two crabs sit in a rock pool and hermit crabs cross the sand past a bucket and spade. On land there is a lemonade stand, a slice of watermelon on a picnic table, a barbecue with corn on the cob and a strawberry field with a farm cart, and for the evening, an owl and a raccoon stargazing through a telescope.

Which pages suit a young child?

Quick to color strips the grid back to the easiest sheets and starts with the fastest of them.

• A boy at a lemonade stand
• A dolphin leaping by a sailboat
• A boy hiking to a mountain lake

The next step up has one clear activity and plenty of open space, which suits children from about five: the crabs in the rock pool, the boy sliding down a sand dune, the watermelon and lemonade, the campsite under the stars. From around seven, the busier outdoor scenes hold attention longer, like the children floating down the river or the beach volleyball game, where the net alone is a grid of small squares to fill.

Summer coloring pages for adults

Lots of detail keeps the other end, where patterned cushions, shelves of books and rows of plants fill the page. The densest open the band.

• A strawberry picking field
• A seaside cafe terrace
• A carousel on the seaside promenade

The slow pages are the cozy ones: a cat asleep in a sunny window seat among cushions and plants, a garden shed turned into a reading nook with fairy lights, two bears on a porch swing under string lights, a summer kitchen with jars of jam cooling by open windows. They suit an evening on the porch with a set of fine-tipped pens or sharp colored pencils (the colored pencil guide compares sets). For more of that homey mood through the rest of the year, the cozy coloring pages carry on.

How do you make a page look like a hot day?

Start with the sky and the water, because they set the temperature. A deep, even blue sky with no clouds colored in reads as midday heat, and the sea looks warmer in turquoise near the shore and darker blue toward the horizon. Leave the sand as pale yellow or bare paper with a few beige specks rather than coloring it orange.

Shadows do the rest. A strip of blue-violet under the beach umbrella, the deck chairs and the picnic table makes the sunlight around them look brighter without adding any yellow. On the night pages, color the sky dark blue first and leave the stars, fireflies and lantern glow as white paper.

Coloring on a trip and after it

A few pages and a pencil case fit in the glove box. The road trip car with suitcases on the roof, the camper van and the boy hiking to a mountain lake are good ones to hand out on the way, since they show what is coming. On rainy days at a rented cabin, the indoor pages fill the afternoon.

Afterward, a colored page makes a simple summer journal: write where you went and what you saw on the back, and punch holes to keep a season's worth in a binder. Press Add to pack under any drawing to set it aside, then print everything you picked as one PDF, which the pack keeps as you move between collections. Pair the lemonade stand and the watermelon with a few ice cream coloring pages for a summer party table, or put a sea turtle next to some animal coloring pages.

Why the light is different in summer

Summer pages look wrong when they are colored like any other season, and the reason is the angle of the sun.

In summer the sun is high, so shadows are short and fall almost straight down underneath things. In winter they are long and stretch sideways. Drawing a long raking shadow under a sandcastle at noon is the sort of mistake that makes a picture feel off without anyone knowing why.

High sun also bleaches color. Midday summer scenes have pale, washed-out ground and strong dark shadows, with the richest color in the early evening. If a child wants a beach to look hot, the answer is less color on the sand, not more.

Sea color is depth. Shallow water over pale sand is turquoise, deeper water is blue, and the line between them follows the shape of the sea bed rather than being straight. Coloring that band correctly is what makes a drawn sea look like a real one.

Warm air distorts. The shimmer over a road on a hot day is why distant things in summer scenes look soft at the edges, and leaving the far background barely colored says "hot" more effectively than a big yellow sun.

The ocean coloring pages carry the water, and the ice cream coloring pages the rest of the afternoon.

Summer or spring?

Summer here is the beach, the heat and the long break: water, camping, fairs and trips. Blossom, April rain, baby farm animals and seed planting are in the spring coloring pages, which cover the weeks before.

A4 throughout. Print at 100 % scale on A4 or "fit to page" on US Letter, draft mode off, and the lines stay black enough to color inside. The printing guide has the rest. Every sheet is a free printable PDF at 300 dpi.