You might experience a challenge when coloring a printable pirates page. These complex coloring pages often have much more than a pirate figure on them, which means that you also color an animal, a ship, or tropical trees, such as palm or palmetto trees.
Welcome to our collection of free PIRATES coloring pages. Click the Pirates pictures or illustrations you like and you’ll be taken to the PDF download and/or print page. Every Pirates coloring page is a printable PDF and/or can be downloaded.
Two young pirates. One holding a treasure map while the other is looking at the treasure box.
Illustration of a smiling pirate near a treasure box with his pirate ship on the back.
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Pirates Coloring Book (Free Download & Printable PDF)
Get our free coloring book with 20 Easter Egg coloring pages.
If you prefer individual coloring pages, see above.
You will need a diverse set of colors since these pirate coloring pages will have so many details. You might typically like using colored pens, but you will need to blend the colors in these pictures, so choosing oil pastels, crayons, or waxy colored pencils will work best.
Your pirates or pirates probably take up most of the foreground of your coloring page. You need to determine what you want them to look like. Will you provide them with solid black outfits as many cartoons and movies depict them or will you color them using the vivid colors of clothing they historically wore? Up through the early 20th century, most trade routes relayed upon ships for transportation overseas or along coastlines. Pirates would hide along the coasts of barrier islands or on little known islands in the Pacific, Atlantic, or Indian oceans, lying in wait for passing ships carrying valuable cargo. They often wore the same clothes as local natives, which in some areas included indigo and other bright, vibrant clothing dyes. It’s your call on whether you want your pirates to look like movie pirates or historical ones.
You will also need to color the pirates’ facial features and hair. These may include a beard, so you will need to color or sketch in feathery strokes to show the beard growth or hair growth. Pirates tend to grow long hair, there being few barber shops on the high seas.
Your background needs some attention, too. In most of these coloring pages about pirates you will find either an island motif or a pirate ship in the background. Each of these options requires a unique approach. For an island motif, you will have tropical trees to color. These might have fruit on them, such as coconuts, or they may be evergreen, such as palm trees. A picture of an island will also typically include many sub-tropical or tropical flowers. This foliage typically consists of many vibrant colors and often, the flowers will have more than one jewel tone to them, perhaps consisting of an orange or tangerine shade on the outside, rimmed with a ruby tone. The center of these flowers may be gold or bright yellow. The stems and vines of these plants typically grow to a deep shade of green – emerald or jade.
You also have animal life in some of these coloring pictures. Pirates often get depicted with a parrot or other colorful bird. These birds’ feathers provide an array of hues from the brightest blues to the deepest reds. You might look at a book of tropical birds to see what colors to include and to help you discern a parrot from a parakeet or a cockatiel from a cockatoo. Each of these birds has been depicted with pirates and each looks different from the other. Their feathers take on some of the brightest colors in the animal kingdom though, and some appear iridescent.
Of course, you will also probably have a bit of ocean to color in these pages. Try to determine where your pirates’ coloring page is set depending on the items in it. Why you ask? Because the oceans each take on different colors and shades of blue. A picture of the Caribbean Sea, for example, looks very different from the waters off the coast of Maine or the coast of South Carolina. The latter might surprise you since Maine and SC are on the same coast, but many underwater items, including topography and ocean life influence the color of the water. That’s why some locations have cerulean blue water while others appear to have navy blue water and still others appear to have transparent water. In the latter areas, you can often rent boats with see-thru bottoms that let you float along and see the fish swimming in the water as you travel.
If you have beach sand showing in your picture, you also need to color it. This requires research, also. Some islands’ beaches consist of white sand while the eastern coast of the US has cream or brown sand. Seashells cover many of it’s beaches while some of the beaches in the United Kingdom have small stones or pebbles on them. Other shores have little sand, but mossy grass growing on their shores instead. Other coastlines consist of large, rocky shorelines.
