12 Printable Leaf Coloring Pages – Maple, Oak, Palm, and more!
If you’re looking for pretty and simple printable leaf coloring pages, this set includes maple, oak, palm, aspen – and 8 more leaves! When you’re done, check out these mushroom coloring pages, too. This post contains affiliate links.
If you’re a fan of coloring of any age, leaf coloring pages are a must-try. Leaves are one of those wonders of nature: they are so similar in basic structure, yet so different! Virtually any plant can be identified by simply snapping a photo of its leaves.
That’s why these leaf coloring pages were kept simple: focus on the simplified shape of each leaf and have fun coloring!
And yes, grown-ups and kids can both have fun learning about leaf shapes and coloring in leaves with these. Kids can color them in more simply or get creative, and adults can practice shading and highlighting, and blending various art supplies on these.
Learn more about the Leaf Coloring Pages
A peek at the whole bundle
These coloring pages are sold as a bundle, ready for you to download and explore. They include the following leaves.
You have a magnolia, maple, ash, and palm. These are obviously not proportionate to each other and are designed to fill the page as much as possible.
There’s Linden, chestnut (note: the spelling has been fixed on your copy).
Finally, you get Lilac (did you know that’s a tree?) Birch, Poplar, and Holly.
While these are great for any time, they are fabulous for coloring and using in fall crafts – or even Christmas! Do them all at once or break them out for certain occasions.
Download the leaf coloring pages
This is a premium download, availableย in my shop, on Etsy, and on TpT. Your purchase helps keep this blog alive and the tutorials coming.
Tips for coloring leaf coloring pages
What I used
I always like to share my best tips for coloring these when I can.
For these, I pulled out my Ohuhu alcohol markers. I pulled out sets of similar colors – and stepped a bit outside the expected bounds, going deeper, darker, yellower, and browner than the obvious.
I protected my surface using a sheet of plastic for backing. The markers I used were fine tip on one side and chisel on the other. I do find brush-tip alcohol markers easier to blend since they fade more naturally.
Alcohol markers are fabulous for layering and blending on projects like this one because they won’t soak the page and shrivel it – they just absorb right in.
Color theory in leaf coloring pages
When choosing your colors, don’t just stick with the obvious. Think of the variation in color in what you see, and step outside the box. On the red maple leaf, I added a splash of yellow that really made it pop more than the others.
The aspen would never be a flat yellow. It always has a brown tone to it.
Studying photos of leaves as you color your leaf coloring pages is a really helpful way to get a convincing effect.
More cool supplies for coloring leaf coloring pages
If you’re not up for using alcohol markers, or just aren’t in the mood for them, try this (and yes, you can follow the steps below roughly using these media too):
- Try this with chalk pastels instead
- Soft core colored pencils are a favorite! A good mid-range brand is Prismacolor Premiere.
- Trace the design onto a watercolor board using carbon paper and color it with watercolors.
You can also add highlights using a white gel pen, sparkle using a gold paint marker, or use your imagination to overlay it with doodles and mandalas!
How to color leaf coloring pages – step by step tutorial
I usually stick to basic tips and not an exact process for coloring pages, because you need to be the artist.
However, since this is a more nature-sourced and specific – “technical” – coloring page, I’ll follow a process – but do whatever YOU’D like!
1. Swatch each color you plan to use before you start, testing how they blend. For the maple leaf, start with a darker red. Fill in around the border, adding thicker blocks of color in some spaces.
Avoid making things too homogeneous.
2. Take a lighter and brighter shade of red and color over it, blending the colors together. I recommend coloring over your darker color, too, to get a better blend. Use light blending strokes as needed.
3. Keep going lighter and brighter. Don’t be afraid to go more orange and yellow. If you go too bright too fast, choose an in-between color to blend things better.
And remember, nature doesn’t have perfect blends either!
4. Keep going, overlapping and blending.
I often like to find a very light shade that I can use to go over the whole thing and set a specific “tone”.
5. For the aspen leaf, which I colored “yellow”, I started out with tans as my deeper color, working my way into golden tones and yellow. This one I left flat and less dynamic.
6. On the oak, which I colored green, I started out with deeper colors on the inside, working my way lighter. I did jump ahead a bit on this one, coloring the outline in the light shade first just because I wanted to block that in with neat strokes to allow me to then do more fast strokes on the inside.
I did then go over the whole leaf with the same process.
Have fun coloring your leaf coloring pages! And no, you don’t need to keep them realistic! You can color them in a rainbow spectrum, see how many shades of green you can discover, or just work with any fantastical color scheme!
And yes, this would make a FABULOUS classroom project – whether it’s a bulletin board or garland. Give everyone a leaf to color and see what they come up with!
In case you missed it, download your leaf coloring pagesย in my shop, on Etsy, and on TpT!
If you enjoyed this, you’ll definitely want to check out my tutorial on how to draw a maple leaf!
