Elephant Coloring Pages

An elephant is mostly one enormous shape with two small decisions attached, the eye and the trunk, and that is what makes it such a reliable subject for young children. There is no way to get the body wrong. These 14 pages run from a baby rolling in a mud puddle to a decorated parade elephant covered in pattern. Every sheet downloads as a free printable PDF sized for US Letter paper, 8.5 by 11 inches, instantly and without an account.

The set divides into simple and detailed line art. Simple sheets give a large uncluttered animal and suit ages 3 to 6. Elephant Family Walking Together Through Savanna and Adorable Baby Elephant With Big Floppy Ears are the standard first prints. Detailed sheets add skin wrinkles, background animals and ornament. Elephant Drinking At A Watering Hole With Birds and Baby Elephant With Mother Touching Trunks Lovingly reward slow work from older children and adults.

Two pages in this set do something the others do not. Parade Of Decorated Elephants In Celebration is really a pattern exercise wearing an elephant costume, and it is the sheet to reach for when a child wants to use every pencil in the tin. Elephant Surrounded By Tropical Flowers And Leaves works the same way. Classrooms use the family sheets during units on animal social groups, since elephant herds are led by the oldest female. All of these are free, printable and instant, with no sign-up before download.

Two tips specific to elephants. Do not color the skin flat gray. Real elephants dust and mud bathe constantly and take on the color of local soil, so a warm red brown or an ochre is more accurate than gray and looks far better on paper. And run your pencil strokes along the direction of the skin creases rather than across them, especially on the trunk, where the horizontal ridges are the only thing giving the shape depth.

More line art in this direction: Lions, Pandas and Farm Animals.