Santa Claus In His Sleigh Pulled By Reindeer Coloring Page

The sleigh is shown side on with Santa holding the reins and a sack of parcels behind him, harnessed to a line of reindeer stretching ahead across the page. Curls on the sleigh runners, a few stars, and nothing else competing for attention. The shapes are large and the outlines heavy, which makes this one of the more forgiving pages for a colorist who is still learning to slow down at the edges.

There is an easy trick for the sleigh. Fill it a strong red, then go back over just the curled runner and the trim with that same red pressed harder, and it will look like polished lacquer catching a highlight. The harness straps are worth doing in a dark brown so the team reads as connected rather than as separate animals standing in a row.

The red suit is often blamed on Coca-Cola advertising from the 1930s, which is not quite right. Illustrators including Thomas Nast were drawing Santa in red decades earlier, in the 1870s. The advertising made the image uniform, it did not invent it.