Turkey Playing in Falling Leaves Coloring Page

Motion drives this page. The turkey runs to the right with both wings thrown open and one foot off the ground, while leaves tumble through the air all around it and pile up along the bottom edge. The leaves come in several shapes, some with the deep lobes of a maple, others simple ovals with a single vein down the middle, and each is drawn as one clear outline with white space around it.

Give the leaves and the bird different jobs. Leaves in the air can be your loudest reds and oranges, since they are what the eye should catch first, while the turkey stays in muted browns and holds the center. Coloring the airborne leaves slightly brighter than the ones already fallen adds a sense of depth without any shading skill at all.

There is a reason the colors appear at all. The orange and yellow pigments sit in the leaf the entire summer, hidden under green chlorophyll. When the tree stops maintaining that chlorophyll in autumn, the green drains away and reveals what was already there, while the reds are manufactured fresh in the final weeks.