Free Adult Coloring Pages + Why Coloring is Cool

I had no idea that adult coloring was popular until a friend pointed me to this book on Amazon. Baffled, I did some Googling and found many resources for adult coloring pages. This led me to one very important question: “Why am *I* not an adult colorer?” I knew then that I had to join this creative movement, both as a coloring page maker and a coloring page, er, colorer. I hope you’ll enjoy the fruits of my revelation; I’ve gone a bit crazy with the freebies today!

The first free adult coloring page I made for you is an elegant perfume piece accented with flowers, which you can download by clicking here. It was inspired by artist Zakkiya Hamza‘s poppies and a Chanel perfume bottle, one of my favorite illustrations!

The beauty of coloring is you can do whatever you want as far as colors and materials used to color. I’m going to show you exactly how I colored it in, but I wholeheartedly encourage you to at least partially ignore how I did it and make your flowers tie-dye colors, color your perfume bottle purple … anything you want to do! I am coloring with crayons today, but you should color with whatever you want: markers, watercolors, inks, etc. Really: do what makes you happy! The only thing I am going to point out is if you are coloring with crayons or markers, you can print the coloring page out on standard 24# paper. If you are coloring with watercolor, I’d advise printing it out on sturdier stuff, like 70-80 lb. drawing paper that has been cut to a size your printer can handle.

If you are using wax crayons, it’s never a bad idea to sharpen them beforehand. I keep my sharpener in a little plastic container, which I also use to catch all the shavings.

You also may want to test out your colors before you choose to use them. Sometimes crayon colors are deceiving … they may look a certain way in solid form, but result in a color that is surprising {and sometimes not in a good way}!

I love vibrant colors, so I’m a “hard” crayon colorer. This is a term that I just made up to describe putting a lot of pressure on the crayon to result in deep, vivid color. Again, this is only my technique: you should color how ever you want to.

For elements that are inside the perfume bottle {and therefore being seen through the perfume bottle}, I’m using a “soft” crayon coloring technique. The idea is the “soft” colors will blend with the “hard” color that I choose for the bottle here in a few steps.

Here’s an example of using a “soft” color to blend with a “hard” color. The “soft” color I have chosen here is red, and I’m using it to accent my tulips.

After those accents are made, I go over the “soft” red with a “hard” yellow. In order for this technique to work, your “soft” color must be darker than your “hard” color, so the “soft” color can show through.

You very well could do some blending on the leaves and vines, but I decided to just go with one green.

Here, you can see that I’m putting a very light yellow with hard pressure on the perfume bottle. In the process, I’m blending all the “soft” colors in the bottle.

I want the top of my perfume bottle to be lighter than the bottom. Again, this is just a personal preference: you should feel free to make the top of your perfume bottle neon pink if you want to. To accomplish a lighter tone, I am going to go over the bottle’s top with soft pressure and the yellow crayon I used for the rest of the bottle.

Then, I’m going to add some green accents that suggest a reflection of leaves. As a side note, I’m getting a little complicated here: there’s really no need to think this through that much.

The final step is to go over the whole bottle top with white. That gives the top a polished finish and blends the “soft” yellow.

At this point, you may notice that the crayon obscures some of your black lines. Can you see how the black accents, especially those in the bottle, aren’t very clear because the yellow sort of covers them up?

To remedy that, you can just use your fingernail {or the tip of a butter knife/a similar object} to scrape some of the crayon off of the black lines. They won’t be as good as new, but they’ll be significantly more vivid!

Once you finish coloring the page, you can do whatever you want with it. It’s perfect for cutting into size 8″x10″ and displaying, or you can tuck it away for safe keeping.

Before I present the other coloring pages I created for you, I want to touch on why, exactly, coloring is cool. First of all, coloring is very therapeutic, and is even recommended by some psychologists. It’s touted as a way to combat stress and promote relaxation in adults {as per The Huffington Post}. Even if you’re the most relaxed person on the planet, it’s just fun. I mean, there’s this feeling of giddiness when you fill in the first element on your page {in my case, the rose in the perfume illustration}. You see how awesome that looks, and you think, “Oh, wow! I can’t wait to see what the finished piece ends up looking like!” If you have children {or children in your life}, coloring is an activity you can enjoy with them. I honestly cannot wait until my niece is old enough to enjoy this activity with me because it’s a wonderful bonding opportunity! Finally, the end result is very gratifying. I’m happy to report that the colored-in perfume bottle is proudly on display on my studio wall.

Okay, the “jump on this bandwagon with me” spiel is over. Now for the other free adult coloring pages! I created three different pages: two full-page tile motifs {based, of course, off of the Hand-Painted Tiles Illustration Tutorial} …

… As well as a page of two 5″x7″ tile cards that feature a blank oval in the center for calligraphy/text/whatever.

You can download all three of these free adult coloring pages by clicking here.

Since the concept of the 5″x7″ tile cards might be a little foggy, I’ll show you what I did with mine. For the first one, I used a brush pen … sometimes it’s fun to switch up your materials!

You can see that the brush pen works very well in tiny corners.

The photo below shows what I ended up with. The beauty of these printable templates, though, is that you truly can choose any colors you want. Your tiles will end up looking way different than mine!

At this point, you can do whatever you want with the piece. I chose to write my father-in-law’s address in so we can get on the ball with sending a Father’s Day card {Father’s Day, by the way, is June 21st. If your dad lives abroad as well, now is a good time to think about making a card!}. I used Janet Style Calligraphy {with some flourish!} and Sans Serif font from Hand-Lettering for a Latté, as well as those clear envelopes I’ve been raving about.

For the sort of leafy-motif tile, I used watercolor. I really, really love the Perylene Green from the Greenleaf & Blueberry travel set.

I used Antwerp Blue for the circles.

Of course, you can color your entire tile in, but I was really digging the minimalistic, clean look!

For this piece, I decided to write a quote using my Perylene Green watercolor and a standard, small-ish watercolor brush. I used Kaitlin style calligraphy letterforms, but I didn’t worry too much about putting pressure on the downstrokes or letting up on the upstrokes. That carefree look is what adds appeal to brush-made watercolor calligraphy!

The effect was very sweet and simple with a hint of sophisticated whimsy.

When it boils down to it, the point of this blog post is to provide you with printable free adult coloring pages — you truly can ignore everything I just showed you and put your own spin on how you color these pieces in and/or what you do with them! I’d love to see what you come up with on Facebook and Instagram. I’m curious and excited to see!

Thanks again — just, really, thank you — for reading TPK, and we’ll meet again in Tuesday’s blog post!

Warmly,

*This post contains affiliate links to Amazon