42 Flowers Coloring Pages: Free Printable Pencil Designs

Forty-two flower pages, all pencil, all free to print. Some are clean outlines you can fill in straight away. Others are fully shaded studies with the tone already laid down — those work better as references to copy than as pages to colour over, and it pays to know which is which before printing a stack.

They are sorted by flower below, so you can jump straight to sunflowers or roses. For a shorter set, the companion collection of flower coloring pages covers similar ground at half the length.

Sunflowers

Big petals, textured centre, leaves doing most of the shading work. More in the sunflower coloring pages.

1. Pale blue line, so the outline survives any colour laid over it. Work the stippled seed head outwards in small circles, not flat shading.

2. The cleanest sunflower here — pure outline, spiral seed pattern, no shading to fight. Print this one for bold, saturated yellows.

3. The centre is already dark, so leave it and colour the petals. Tips lighter than the base and the head turns three-dimensional.

4. Every petal overlaps its neighbour. Keep a hairline of white at each overlap or the head becomes one yellow blob.

Tulips

Cup shapes. The page lives or dies on whether the cup reads as curved.

5. Three blooms at three angles, leaves crossing behind the stems. Decide which leaf is in front before any colour goes down.

6. Lighter line weight, buds trailing left. Keep the buds a shade cooler than the open flowers and the eye goes to the blooms.

7. The leaves are shaded far darker than the petals. Resist evening it out — the dark leaves make the pale cups glow.

Roses

The spiral centre is the difficulty. Get the innermost petals right and the rest follows.

8. A full bloom with a tight spiral core. Keep your deepest tone where the petals tuck in — that shadow is the whole rose.

9. A closed bud drawn with far fewer lines. A good warm-up, and the one to hand anyone who finds a full rose intimidating.

10. Almost no shading, the most forgiving rose here. The leaf veins are drawn in, so colour the leaves in two tones along the ribs.

11. Note how the lower leaf twists to show its underside. Colour that underside a flatter, greyer green than the top surface.

If roses are your thing, there are plenty more in the collection of rose coloring pages.

Daisies and Cosmos

Flat open faces with a button centre — easiest to colour, hardest to make interesting.

12. Four heads at slightly different tilts. Vary the petal colour between them; identical daisies look printed rather than drawn.

13. An edge-to-edge repeat with no background. Pick three colours, rotate them, let the rhythm do the work.

14. One flower, one pot, plenty of white space. The terracotta rim needs a darker band inside or the pot looks flat.

15. Petals overlap heavily and the leaves behind are dense. Start with the frontmost flower and work back into the tangle.

16. The heads are cropped by the page edge. Colour those slightly paler so the complete flowers stay in front.

17. Each ring of petals sits shorter than the one below. Follow those rings instead of shading the head as one shape.

Hibiscus, Lilies and Stylised Blooms

Wide trumpet shapes with a protruding stamen — the most dramatic pages here.

18. Five petals fanning from one point, every crease running back to it. Follow the creases with your strokes rather than crossing them.

19. The long stamen with pollen dots is the signature of a hibiscus. Keep it lighter than the petal behind it or it disappears.

20. Printed on a warm background rather than white, so pale colours read softly. Good for pencil, poor for pale markers.

21. The petal veins radiate like a fan. Base colour first, then darker strokes along the veins — two passes, but it looks painted.

22. The softest hibiscus page, with almost no hard outline. Better as a shading reference than a page to fill in.

23. A stylised lily with swirls trailing off the bottom. Leave those swirls uncoloured and they read as movement rather than clutter.

24. Barely a real flower — tapering petals and curling tendrils. A good candidate for colour that owes nothing to nature.

Bouquets in Vases

Glass is the challenge here, not the flowers.

25. Colour the stems inside the jar a paler, greyer version of those above, and the glass appears without you drawing it.

26. A loose, airy arrangement with masses of tiny filler blooms. Do the filler last, in one muted tone.

27. The most detailed page here. The water line across the vase needs a tonal step either side or it vanishes.

Wildflower Scenes with Butterflies

Full scenes rather than single specimens, and the butterflies give you somewhere to put a strong colour.

28. Tall stems, small blossoms, two butterflies drifting right. Save your brightest colour for the wings; everything else stays muted.

29. Flowers cascade down the page while the butterflies rise the other way. Colour the two directions differently to keep that tension.

30. A whole meadow on one page. Block in the large flowers first, then decide how much of the small stuff to fill.

31. One big cosmos anchors the front. Colour it first and match everything behind to the value you land on.

Butterflies appear on four pages here. The butterfly coloring pages go further into wing patterns, and the nature coloring pages mix in leaves, trees and landscapes.

Peonies and Ornamental Florals

Many-petalled blooms and scrollwork — the most demanding set.

32. Peonies wound through scrollwork. Decide early which is foreground — giving flowers and scroll equal weight flattens the whole strip.

33. A cascading spray of small blooms and foliage. Work top to bottom in three colours; more turns to noise.

34. The lightest peony page, clean line and open petals. The place to start if you have never coloured a many-petalled flower.

35. Four peonies from tight bud to fully blown. Colour them in that order and petal structure explains itself.

36. Heavily shaded and tightly packed, barely any white left. A shading reference to copy rather than a page to colour.

Easy Flowers for Kids

Thick lines, big shapes, nothing fiddly.

37. A smiling daisy with eight fat petals. Nothing on the page is smaller than a crayon tip, which is the point.

38. Same idea with pointed petals and a bending stem, easier for small hands to follow than a straight one.

39. A tiny potted plant with three rounded petals — few enough shapes to finish in one sitting without losing interest.

40. Five petals, four leaves, one pot. A good first page for practising staying inside the line.

If the drawing itself is the goal rather than the colouring, the step-by-step easy flower drawings for beginners cover the same shapes from scratch.

Two Odd Ones Out

Neither fits a category. Both are worth printing.

41. A wreath of blossoms forming an open ring. Leave the gap at the top empty and it reads handmade rather than stamped.

42. A dandelion clock, seeds drifting off the stem. Almost nothing to colour, and the best study of implied movement here.

Getting a Better Result From These Pages

Print quality does more for the finished page than any pencil you own:

• Print at 100% scale on paper of at least 120gsm. Copier paper buckles the moment you layer colour.
• If the pencil shading is already dark, colour lightly over it or redraw the shape instead.
• Build colour in thin layers. Three light passes leave you something you can still adjust; one heavy pass does not.
• Leave something white. A page where everything is coloured has no focal point.
• Work back to front, furthest flower first, so you never colour around something already finished.

Coloured pencil suits these pages better than marker: the graphite underneath shows through and blends instead of being flooded. The colour pencil sketching ideas cover layering and burnishing in more depth, and the spring coloring pages take the same approach seasonally.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these flower coloring pages free to print?

Yes. Right-click any image, save it, and print at full size. Personal and classroom use, as many copies as you need.

Which of these pages are best for young children?

The four in the Easy Flowers for Kids section. Everything else has petal detail fine enough to frustrate a child under about seven — and the peony pages frustrate plenty of adults.

Why are some pages already shaded?

They were drawn as pencil studies, not blank outlines. Colour over them lightly for a tinted drawing, or redraw the flower yourself and learn far more about how petals turn.

What colours actually suit pencil-shaded pages like these?

Muted ones. Grey tone already sits under your colour, so saturated reds and blues turn muddy. Dusty pinks, ochres, sage greens and soft violets sit on graphite without fighting it.