Rainbow coloring page

Six separate bands, a cloud at each end and three birds overhead, all in open outline on one letter page.

Six bands make up the arch on this sheet, and the important detail is that each one is drawn as its own closed shape with a line on both sides of it. Nothing here is a single thick stripe you have to divide by eye. The arch springs from a rounded, bumpy cloud at the left end and comes down into a matching cloud at the right. Above the arch, in the open sky, three simple birds are drawn the way birds are drawn from a distance, as small curved shapes with no feathers or feet. The rest of the page is white space, and that white space is part of the design.

A rainbow in the sky runs red along the outer edge of the arch and violet along the inner edge, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. This drawing has six bands, so that sequence fits it exactly, one color to a band, outside to inside. Following it gives you a page that reads instantly as a rainbow from across a room. Ignoring it gives you something else worth having. Six bands of six blues, or a gradient that runs warm at one end of the arch and cool at the other, or alternating bands with every second one left white, all work because the outlines keep the structure legible no matter what goes inside.

The bands are long and curved, which is a different coloring problem from filling a round shape. A stroke that follows the curve of the band keeps the fill even and hides the places where you lift the pencil. A stroke that runs straight across the band will fight the curve and leave visible ridges at the edges. Work one band at a time from one cloud to the other, and turn the paper as you go rather than twisting your wrist. The bands narrow slightly near the ends where they meet the clouds, so ease off there.

Clouds are the trap on this page and also the best part of it. Left white, they read as clouds immediately and give the eye somewhere to rest. But a cloud does not have to be white. A very light gray laid along the underside of each bump and left bare on top turns a flat shape into something rounded, and that trick asks for one pencil and a light, patient hand. A soft blue does the same job with a friendlier result. Whatever you do, keep the clouds lighter than the darkest band of the arch, or the arch stops being the subject of the drawing.

The three birds are tiny compared with everything else, and that changes which tool you want in your hand. A marker tip is wider than the whole bird on this sheet, so a marker will flood past the line every time. A sharp colored pencil or a gel pen is the right instrument for those three shapes, and pressing hard is what makes the line skid outside the outline, so keep the touch light and go around twice instead of once. Simple black birds against white sky is the classic answer, but they can also pick up a color from one of the bands and tie the top of the page to the arch.

Crayon behaves well on the wide bands and badly on the birds. It skips across the tooth of the paper, which gives the arch a soft, broken texture that looks a lot like something seen through air. Colored pencil layers, so you can put yellow over a light orange and get a band that shifts along its length. Markers can push the bands to a flat, dense fill, and if that is the goal, print on heavier card stock and accept that the back of the sheet will show ghosting. Watercolor pencil dampened lightly is the one way to get the bands to bleed gently into each other, which is closer to how a rainbow actually looks in the sky.

Print at actual size on plain letter paper rather than letting the print dialog shrink it to fit, because the six bands are sized so a crayon fits inside one comfortably and a scaled-down copy takes that away. If two people want to color together, print two copies and try the same arch with different rules, one following the real sequence and one inventing its own. We drew the outlines heavy rather than fine, which is what keeps them legible when the sheet is reproduced.

Finished, this is a sheet that suits a window, because the arch is an open shape with daylight behind it. The arch shape reads from the outside of the glass, and light coming through the colored bands is the whole point of a rainbow anyway. It also works cut out along the outer curve and taped to a folder or a door, with the two clouds acting as feet. Set beside a drawing that fills its page edge to edge, this one leaves real open sky, so the version you make will be defined as much by what you leave white as by what you color.

Published August 28, 2026Updated August 28, 2026859 words