When my kids were younger I was always on the lookout for activities to keep them busy and enhance their creativity. Coloring books became a staple of the toy box. They went through new coloring books each week like they were candy. I got to the point that I would often tear out pages and take them to work and make copies of them since the kids often wanted to color the same or similar pages over and over again. The coloring books are not cheap anymore so I looked for ways to cut costs. Free coloring books are what every parent hopes to find one day but never does. Since they were young I always felt they were just making a mess out of coloring books that I paid good money for.
Their ability to not make a mess out of the coloring books had thankfully ended when they got past the preschool age. They started to want only animals to color. They expressed disappointment if I got the coloring books with the cutesy animals in them. They wanted the lifelike ones. So I began my quest to find lifelike animal coloring books for them to color that did not cost an arm and a leg. I had no idea that they were that hard to find. Most of the animal drawings were Disney types so they would not do. I soon resorted to the internet and found not only some great free coloring pages but the drawings were often better than the store bought ones. Here are some of my finds for free lifelike animal pages to print out and color.
Animal coloring pages
This site has a wide variety of animal drawings to choose from. Many of them are lifelike but there still is a large portion of them that are cartoon animal drawings.
The National Geographic coloring book
This is by far the best website for lifelike animal coloring pages. It is complex enough for older children to really enjoy the artwork. The artwork can also be utilized in other crafts like making fabric transfers.
A Funk
This site has a large assortment of animals to choose from. The links to the animal coloring pages take you to about 3 or 4 pages of that animal you have clicked on. Each page shows 4 pictures to choose from. The only thing I did not like about this site is that it had one nasty little pop-up that I could not get rid of until I left the main page.
Live.com
Another way to find really nice drawings to color is to use the live.com image search. I prefer it over Google since all the results are on one page and I just have to scroll down to see them all. Just type in your preferred key word like “horse” then add coloring page or drawing. You are bound to find some really nice artwork that can be printed out for the kids to color.
Coloring pages can also be used in other projects like making templates for quilting. You can also print them out on colored craft paper and cut them out for all sorts of decorations.
