Mermaid Ocean Coloring Page

This page splits along the waterline, and each half gets its own texture. Above it, a lighthouse stands on a headland at the right, a low sun sits among flat clouds on the left, and the sea runs in quiet horizontal lines. Below it, fish drift past ribbons of coral and seaweed, and two starfish rest on the seabed.

The mermaid sits on a large rock at the join, which is a neat piece of composition because her tail crosses into the underwater half while her upper body stays in the sky half. Her hair falls in long wavy sections almost to the rock, and her tail is scaled in overlapping rows that shrink as they run toward the fluke.

Those scales carry the page. There are several hundred of them, each closed and each big enough to take a pencil, and grading them from dark at the hip to pale at the tip gives the tail real depth.

Six fish swim at different levels, three above and three below, and each one is banded differently, so they can be colored as a set without repeating.