Turtles have complex shells of many colors. You might only be familiar with box turtles, but many other varieties live in freshwater areas and the oceans. When you color a turtle picture, whether from a coloring book or printable coloring pages, you need a large colored pencil or crayon collection to create the vast range of hues that appear on turtles.
Welcome to our collection of free TURTLE coloring pages. Click the illustrations you like and you’ll be taken to the download and/or print page.
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The complicated covering on which turtles reside keeps their soft bodies protected. Think of it as armor they wear every day. Wax-based crayons and pencils work best for blending colors on your pet drawing or printable coloring page. You will need a mixture of sharpened and dull-edged colored pencils or crayons so you can create the details and ridges in a turtle’s shell. This gets tougher if the picture has more than one turtle, such as a bale of turtles. When you see a group of turtles, it is called a bale. You will probably find this challenging to color, since the shading and shadows that fall on a turtle’s back already complete a complex coloring combination.
If you want to color a turtle in a realistic way, you should reference a book on turtles. If you only know the standard box turtle with its brown and green coloring, get ready for a surprise. Reading a book on these gorgeous creatures of the deep will show you their diversity because some have all the colors of the rainbow on their outer covering and their head markings while others come in shades of orange like a marmalade cat.
Some turtles have ridges on their shell while others have relatively smooth shells. The coloring shades and patterns you use vary according to this. You will need to make a mixture of bold, sharp, and muted, broad brushstrokes to create accurate depictions of the ridges.
Reference photos of actual turtles to learn what each sub-species looks like. Use lighter and darker colors of pencils or crayons to create the highlights and lowlights for the patterns and ridges on the outside of the turtle’s protective layer.
Make your printable coloring pages more visually interesting by printing them on colored printer paper. You can print on black construction paper and use neon crayons to make an interesting picture that will glow in the dark under a blacklight.
Printing on colored paper also provides you with a starting point for your background. If you want to turn a coloring book page into a piece of artwork, you do so by carefully coloring it and adding a background to it. Start with a solid colored background. Color the entire area outside the lines of the turtle a single, solid color. Using a piece of clean, white paper as a smudge tool, smooth and blend the color to soften it and create a uniform appearance. Choose white or yellow to add wave color if your background is the ocean. If you choose a sand color for the background, draw and color in seashells in cream and beige, and light pink.
Blending your colors makes your picture look more real. Whether you use colored pencils or crayons, you can blend your colors. If you do not have a scrap of paper for smudging and blending, you could use your finger if you used wax-based colors. If you look at an actual turtle, you will see that the yellows and greens blend into one another on their outermost layer. The same is true of so-called rainbow turtles and other species and sub-species. Blending your coloring page colors can make your coloring look more like art.
Coloring Pages
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