Patterned Mayflower Ship Coloring Page

This is the ship that carried the pilgrims, drawn side on and riding a stretch of calm water. Three masts carry wide square sails, each one bellied out by the wind and crossed by a few long seam lines that break the canvas into fillable bands. Two small pennants fly from the mastheads. The hull is the richest part of the sheet: long rows of planking curve from bow to stern, and a line of five round portholes sits along the middle, each one a clean circle. The raised stern cabin carries its own row of small square windows, and those are the darkest shapes on the page, which makes them a useful place to start if you want a value anchor before choosing the rest of your colors. Below the waterline the sea is drawn as loose horizontal ripples with a great deal of white paper left between them, so you can lay in a pale blue quickly or leave the water bare and let the ship sit on an empty page. Older children often want to color each plank a slightly different shade of brown, and the drawing is spaced widely enough that this actually works.