Mermaid Coloring Pages — Free Printable PDF

About Mermaid Coloring Pages — Free Printable PDF

Sailors believed in mermaids for centuries. Columbus wrote in his ship's log that he had seen some near the coast of Hispaniola, and added, with obvious disappointment, that they were not nearly as beautiful as painters made them. What he saw were almost certainly manatees. The mermaid people actually hoped to meet, with long hair and a shining tail, has always lived in pictures rather than in the sea, and that is what makes her so good to color. Nobody can say what shade a mermaid's tail is supposed to be, so every choice is the right one.

All the mermaids here are original drawings. None of them comes from a film or a cartoon, so you are free to give each one whatever hair, skin and tail you like. The styles differ a lot from collection to collection. Cute mermaid coloring pages have round faces, big eyes and bold simple outlines in the kawaii and chibi tradition; they are quick, cheerful and easy enough for kids. Detailed mermaid coloring pages for adults and teens go the other way: lace, strings of pearls, long waves of hair and whole underwater rooms full of small treasures, the kind of page that fills an evening. In between are scenes with a story in them: mermaids with dolphins, seahorses, turtles and baby whales, tea parties on the seabed, treasure hunts and homes built inside seashells.

Most collections come in two formats. Black and white pages are classic full-page line art. Pages with a color sample show the finished picture in color on the top half and the same drawing as clean line art below, so you can match the palette or ignore it completely. The Show me buttons near the top of this page narrow the list to the collections that have the kind you want.

Using the pages is simple. Open a collection and scroll through the pictures. Click the one you like and its PDF opens in a new tab, ready to print or to save for later. Every page prints as many times as you need, which helps when two people want the same mermaid. Each collection also has a button that downloads the whole set as a single PDF book, handy if you would rather print everything at once and choose later.

A few things make a mermaid look as if she is really under water. Do not fill the sea with one flat blue: leave the bubbles and a few slanting rays of light as bare white paper, and the water starts to glow. Things farther away turn bluer and paler under water, so a distant rock or a far-off fish needs only one light layer, while everything close up gets full color. For the tail, pick two neighboring shades and alternate them from scale to scale, then go over the lowest rows once more so the tail darkens toward the fin. Green is only a habit: sunset coral fading into gold, navy with silver edges or lavender melting into mint all look wonderful. A pearl needs almost no color at all, just a gray-lilac shadow on one side and a white dot left on the other. A white gel pen for highlights and a metallic one for a few scales are worth keeping within reach.

Plain office paper is fine for pencils and crayons. Markers behave better on light cardstock, and if you like to wash watercolor over the sea, choose the heaviest paper your printer accepts. Print at actual size so the margins stay even. Mermaid coloring sheets are a natural fit for a mermaid birthday party: put a stack on the table with a cup of pencils and the early guests have something to do. They also travel well, to a beach house, on a long drive or into a classroom during an ocean week.

This page grows as new mermaid collections are finished, so there is usually something here you have not colored yet.