Seal Pup Lying on the Ice Coloring Page

A seal pup lies on its front with its head lifted and turned up, whiskers spread wide and one flipper resting out to the side. The body runs back from the shoulders in a single long unbroken curve to a tail flipper at the far end.

There is almost nothing inside that outline, and the ice underneath is a single straight line. That is the whole composition. It makes this one of the most forgiving pages in the collection: there is one very large area to fill, and a child who colors straight through it without stopping still gets a finished animal.

The face carries the detail. One round eye, a dark nose at the tip of the muzzle and four whisker lines curving away on each side.

Seal pups are usually drawn white, which leaves this page in an odd position: color the animal and it stops looking like a pup, leave it white and the sheet looks unfinished. The way through is to color the background instead. A pale blue wash across the ice and up behind the seal leaves the animal white and makes it read as a seal rather than an empty shape.

If you would rather color the animal, a soft gray with a paler belly is the honest alternative.