Art Coloring Pages

• Art supplies: a jar of brushes, squeezed paint tubes, a palette and a box of crayons
• Color theory sheets: a blank color wheel, a warm-and-cool landscape and a value scale from light to dark
• Still lifes: a fruit bowl, a vase of sunflowers and a table with a jug and lemons
• Dot painting: a landscape drawn as empty circles to fill one dot at a time
• Cubist pages: a face and a guitar broken into angular pieces seen from several sides at once
• Pop style: a sneaker repeated in a grid with thick outlines, ready for four different color schemes
• Stained glass: a bird divided by heavy black lines
• In the studio: a painter at an easel, a potter at a wheel and a gallery wall with visitors

The color wheel. In the traditional wheel used in art class, the three primary colors are red, yellow and blue. Mix two primaries and you get a secondary color: red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple. Have students color the primaries first, then blend their way around the wheel.

Warm and cool. Reds, oranges and yellows feel warm. Blues, greens and purples feel cool. On the landscape sheet, color the sky warm and the land cool, then swap on a second copy and compare the mood.

Complementary pairs. Colors opposite each other on the wheel are complements: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. Side by side, each makes the other look brighter.

Value. Value means how light or dark a color is. The value scale sheet has a row of boxes to shade from white to the darkest tone one pencil can make.

Dots and cubes. On the dot page, try placing blue dots next to yellow ones and step back. From a distance the eye blends them toward green. On the cubist page, color each shard a different shade of one color.

Art teachers use these as warm-ups, sub plans and early-finisher work. At home, they're a way into talking about how pictures are made.