The sitting unicorn
The sitting unicorn: a free printable coloring page, from age 2. A baby unicorn sitting on its haunches, two very large eyes and a spiral horn.
- Recommended age
- Ages 2 and up · 10 to 15 minutes
- Theme
- Unicorns
Sitting, almost face on
This one is not standing: she is sitting, haunches down, front legs stretched out in front of her. We see her almost face on, which changes everything — both eyes are visible, huge, each with two white dots inside and a row of lashes. The horn rises in a spiral, with five rings you can count. The forelock falls between the ears, the larger of which shows its inside. The mane ripples along the neck in three waves, and the tail coils beside it in two loops.
The posture of a very young animal
This is the posture of the very young animal — foal, kitten, puppy — that sits down because it has not yet the strength to stay standing for long. Children read it immediately: they say “it’s a baby” with no explanation needed. The very large eyes and the head that is wide compared with the body are the two signs that trigger that reading, and the drawing leans into them. So a sitting unicorn gets colored differently from a standing one: more gently, in softer shades, because the child treats her like a baby.
Eyes to work around
The large surfaces — the body, the head, the rump — fill up fast, and they take up nearly the whole page. The eyes are the only real demand: two white dots to preserve inside each black pupil, plus the row of lashes above. That is work of going around, not filling in, and it becomes tidy at about four — before that, a grown-up can take care of it in thirty seconds. The rings of the horn, half a centimetre wide, are the finest part of the page: keep them for the end, when the hand is warm.
Two ways to do the mane
First idea: mane and tail in the same three colors, laid in the same order, so that you can see they go together. Second idea: the three waves of the mane in three tones of a single color, from the lightest at the top to the darkest at the bottom. Pastel pencils do better than markers on a baby animal, because they let the white of the paper breathe. And if your child wants black in the mane, let them: the contrast with a pale body is the finest you will get.
A word for the grown-up: start with the eyes, against all habit. Once the two white dots are preserved and the pupil is properly black, the unicorn “looks back”, and the child wants to finish the rest for her. If the eyes go wrong, you start again on another sheet without having lost an hour.
Coloring pages that go with this one
More pages from the same theme, age or season — the ones you print right after.
