The little bridge
The little bridge: a free printable coloring page, from age 2. One large empty arch, four round figures on the deck, and a striped horn at the top.
- Recommended age
- Ages 2 and up · 10 to 15 minutes
- Theme
- On a journey
- Season
- Summer vacation
An arch and four figures
The bridge takes up the whole width of the sheet. Its arch is enormous — by far the largest area on the page, a rounded vault rising almost to the middle of it. Two thick piers hold it up, one on the right, one on the left. On the deck stand four very simple figures: a round head set on a rounded body, with no arms and no face. The two big ones are at the ends, the two small ones in the middle. And at the summit, planted in the center, a striped unicorn horn, taller than the little figures.
A bridge is for crossing
A bridge is the path that carries on when the ground stops. A river, a road, a ravine: you go over instead of going around. Two-year-olds understand it with their hands long before the words — they build bridges with two blocks and a plank, and run cars underneath. Here, what lies under the arch is not drawn: nothing, white. It is for the child to decide whether to run a river through it, lay a road, or leave the space empty.
One large shape to follow
The whole sheet fits into one gesture: a curve that climbs, crosses the top and comes down. That is precisely the movement the hand learns at about 2, before closed circles and well before straight lines. The thickness of the outline never varies and the contours are widely spaced: it is impossible to close off an area by accident by pressing too hard. The four figures are small enough to be kept for last, when patience is running down — and the page still works even if they stay white.
What goes under the bridge
This is the sheet to bring out with watercolor pencils. The space under the arch is a big clean white: a blue wash laid with a sponge, from the bottom up to the vault, makes a river in ten seconds, and the outline of the bridge will not bleed. Count on 160 gsm paper if you use water, 120 gsm for plain markers. Another idea, dry: give the bridge a stone color — gray, ochre, brick — and save the bright colors for the four figures, so that they are spotted at once on the deck.
A word for the grown-up: ask your child who is crossing the bridge, and where those four are off to. The figures have no faces, so nothing is settled: it is the child who names them, and they then color characters who have become somebody.
Coloring pages that go with this one
More pages from the same theme, age or season — the ones you print right after.
