The unicorn with the long mane
The unicorn with the long mane: a free printable coloring page, from age 2. Six locks covering half the page, and a coat edged with little notches.
- Recommended age
- Ages 2 and up · 10 to 15 minutes
- Theme
- Unicorns
A mane down to the knee
The mane starts at the top of the skull, passes over the left eye and comes down to the knee: on its own it takes up the left half of the sheet. Six long locks, separated by lines that follow the ripple, overlap as they curl outwards. The horn is tall, in a tight spiral, with eight rings. The unicorn is laughing, mouth open. And everywhere the coat stops — the chest, the belly, the bottom of the legs — the outline turns into small notches, like a fringe of fur.
A long-maned pony
This unicorn is drawn not like a toy but like a long-maned breed of pony, a Shetland or a Friesian, whose mane really does fall to the knees. That is what sets her apart from the other sheets in the theme: she has coat, volume, an open mouth, a gaze that comes looking for whoever is coloring her. Past the first years, children often prefer this kind of drawing to the perfectly round heads. They want it to look like something alive, and here it does.
Three big masses, and ten locks if you want them
Very few shapes, and they are enormous: the body, the mane and the tail take up nearly the whole sheet, with no setting around them. A very young child colors it end to end. The sheet has a second life for anyone who wants it, though: count the locks — six for the mane, four for the tail — and color them one by one so that the volume shows. The fur notches, dozens of tiny points along the belly and legs, are of the same order: nobody has to go near them, and those who do spend an hour there.
The gradient, lock by lock
A gradient is the right idea here, and it is within reach: three pencils from the same family — yellow, orange, red — laid lock after lock, from light to dark, following the order of the lines. For the fur notches, do not try to fill each point; a light pass with the pencil held flat is enough to make the coat read. Paper of 120 gsm holds the successive layers better, and a kneaded eraser rescues a gradient that has gone too dark.
A word for the grown-up: suggest numbering the six locks lightly in pencil before starting, from 1 to 6. The child colors in order, knows where they stopped, and finds their work again the next day without hesitating. The numbers disappear under the color.
Coloring pages that go with this one
More pages from the same theme, age or season — the ones you print right after.
