The butterfly
The butterfly: a free printable coloring page, from age 2. Four wings covered with round dots, a ladybug’s back and a striped belly to fill.
- Recommended age
- Ages 2 and up · 10 to 15 minutes
- Theme
- Little bugs
- Season
- Spring
Four wings on a ladybug’s back
This butterfly has something of a ladybug about it, and that is what makes the sheet fun. Four wings open around it: two large ones at the top, two smaller ones below, covered with round dots in three different sizes. The body is an oval split down the middle into two halves, each carrying two big oval spots, and between them appears a striped belly tapering to a point. The head is round, with two black eyes, a smile, two ball-tipped antennae and a striped horn. Ten wavy legs stick out under the wings, five on each side.
From caterpillar to wings
A butterfly begins its life as a caterpillar, then shuts itself into a chrysalis before coming out with its wings: it is the transformation story children remember earliest. Real wings are covered in a minute dust, so fragile that they must never be caught. The round spots, though, really do exist: the peacock butterfly carries four of them, like false eyes, to frighten birds. This drawing mixes the families without warning — butterfly wings and a ladybug’s back on the same creature.
Four very large wings, and dots
The four wings are enormous and fill with one gesture each: between them they take up almost the whole page, and a very young child can stop there with a complete butterfly in front of them. The rest is extra — a dozen dots, four spots on the back, a belly striped with eight or so bands, ten legs. The smallest dots are the size of a pea and the belly bands are tight: those call for a hand that knows how to stop at the line, and they can wait. You take what you want, and the page still stands.
Pale wings, a bold body
The difficulty here is that the wings and the back compete for the eye. A simple solution: the four wings in pale tones — soft yellow, pink, sky blue — and the body in two bold colors. The dots on the wings are better left white, quite simply; that is what nature does, and it saves the page from being saturated. For the striped belly, a colored pencil beats a marker: the bands are too tight for a fat tip, and the pencil lets you avoid biting into the next band.
A word for the grown-up: start with the four wings, never with the body. That is the longest part, and the one your child would abandon if they attacked the page through the small spots. The rest then colors in five minutes, with the feeling of being nearly done.
Coloring pages that go with this one
More pages from the same theme, age or season — the ones you print right after.
