Howling Wolf Under a Full Moon Coloring Page

A wolf sitting in profile with its head thrown back and its muzzle pointing straight at a large full moon. The moon is drawn as one big empty circle and it takes up most of the upper left of the page.

The pose carries everything. You can read the howl from the line of the throat alone, which means the animal itself stays simple: one open body, four legs, two laid-back ears and a thick brush of a tail. The mouth is closed, with no fangs and no open jaw, so the sheet stays usable for younger children.

The coat is left plain apart from a ruff of short tufts down the chest and shoulders. Wolf pages usually drown in fur strokes and become impossible to color. Here a single flat tone works, and gray, brown, russet and near-black all look right.

The moon is the best part of the page and the easiest to get wrong. Leave it white and it glows against a colored wolf. Fill it yellow and the wolf has to go dark to keep the contrast. Decide that before the first crayon lands, because everything else follows from it.