Koala coloring page

A koala hugging a eucalyptus branch, facing forward, with two very large fringed ears.

A koala clings to a thick branch that runs down the right side of the page, facing the viewer with both arms wrapped around it and both feet gripping lower down. Two round eyes with filled pupils sit either side of a large rounded nose that is filled dark, and a small smile is drawn below it. The two ears are the biggest features on the head: each is a wide round shape with a fringe of short strokes all the way round its outer edge. Long pointed leaves grow off the branch in sprays, above the head and below the hands.

The ears and the nose are what make this drawing read as a koala rather than as a small bear, so they are worth doing first and doing deliberately. Each ear has two parts, the fringed outer edge and the smooth inner disc, and coloring them differently is what gives the head depth. The nose is a single large closed shape and is already the darkest area on the page; if you fill it solid, everything else can stay pale and the face still reads from across a room.

The body is one broad open field with a curved line marking off the haunch, and it is the easiest large area on the sheet. Crayon covers it fast and its grain passes for thick fur. The arms and the fingers gripping the branch are the small work: each hand is drawn with separate fingers, and they are narrow enough that a sharpened pencil is a better tool there than anything broad.

The branch is a long straight lane running the height of the page, broken by two knots where the leaves come off. It is the one shape here that benefits from being colored in a single direction, along its length rather than across, because a stroke that follows the wood reads as wood. Leaving it pale and putting the strongest green on the leaves is the arrangement that keeps the animal the most visible thing on the sheet.

The leaves are long, pointed and each carries a center line, which divides every one of them into two halves. That gives you an easy way to make a spray of leaves look alive: color one half of each leaf slightly darker than the other, keeping the darker half on the same side throughout. It takes no more time than filling them flat and the sprays stop looking like cut-outs.

Gray with a paler chest and a dark nose is the reading that matches the animal, and it will look right. It is also a page that takes a completely unrealistic scheme well, because the shapes are large and simple: a blue koala on a purple branch holds together as a drawing in a way a more detailed animal would not. The ears are the one place worth keeping a lighter tone whatever else happens, since a dark ear swallows the fringe that took the drawing its trouble.

Two plain facts about the animal are visible here. A koala is not a bear but a marsupial, which is a different branch of the mammal family altogether, and the drawing gives it the round face and forward-set eyes that go with that. Its diet is almost entirely eucalyptus leaves, which is why the branch is a eucalyptus branch and why the leaves are drawn long and narrow with a single strong midrib rather than as generic round foliage.

Print at actual size on plain letter paper. The fringe around the ears and the fingers on the branch are what a smaller scale loses first. Card stock is worth loading if markers are going on the body, since it is a broad area and the ink will show through thin paper. Cut around the outer edge and the koala comes away holding the branch, with the leaf sprays attached; cutting inside the arms instead frees the animal on its own.

Published August 29, 2026Updated August 29, 2026659 words