Castle colouring page

A three-towered castle with pennants, battlements and a portcullis, drawn small and centred on the sheet.

A castle stands in the middle of the page with a wide band of empty white paper all the way round it, so nothing touches the edge of the sheet on any side. Three towers rise from it: two at the sides, each with a battlemented crown and a cone roof above, and one taller tower in the middle under a cone roof of its own. Each tower flies a plain pennant on a thin pole. Between the side towers runs a battlemented wall with an arched gate under it, and behind the arch a portcullis is drawn as a row of vertical bars with pointed ends. Blocks of stonework are scattered over the towers and the wall.

The stone blocks are the decision that shapes this sheet. They are not a full brick pattern covering every surface — they are a scattering, which leaves most of each tower as open wall between them. That means you can fill every block a slightly different grey and leave the wall white, or colour the wall and leave the blocks white, and both look like stonework. The second is faster and, on a sheet this open, brighter.

The three cone roofs are the largest closed shapes and the natural place for the strongest colour. Because they are identical in construction and different in size, giving all three the same colour makes the castle read as one building; giving them three different colours makes it read as three towers that happen to be joined. Either is a real choice and it is worth making it before the first roof goes down.

The portcullis is the finest work on the page. Its bars are narrow and closely spaced, and a broad tip will bridge two of them at the first touch. A sharp pencil, or simply leaving the bars white and colouring the dark arch behind them, both work — and the second is quicker and gives more contrast, because a white grid against a dark opening is easier to see than a coloured grid against white.

The pennants are three small flags with nothing on them, which makes them the only place on the sheet where a completely free choice has no consequence. They are also small enough to take a colour that would be too loud anywhere else. Colouring all three the same is what makes them read as belonging to one castle rather than to three.

Grey stone with red roofs is the reading the outline invites and it looks right immediately. But a castle drawn as flat shapes takes a fanciful scheme without any trouble: pale blue walls and gold roofs still read as a castle, because the silhouette does the identifying and the colour does not have to help. The wide white margin round the building is worth leaving white in any scheme, since it is what keeps the castle from crowding the page.

Some plain vocabulary is drawn here rather than described. The alternating high and low blocks along the top of a wall are battlements: the raised parts are merlons and the gaps between them are crenels, and defenders stood behind the merlons and shot through the crenels. The grid behind the arch is a portcullis, a gate that dropped straight down in grooves rather than swinging open, which is why it is drawn as vertical bars with points at the bottom.

Print at actual size on plain A4 paper. The portcullis bars and the thin pennant poles are what a smaller print loses first. There is nothing on this sheet that demands heavy paper unless markers are involved, and if they are, the three cone roofs are where the ink will pool. Cut out along the outer silhouette and the castle comes away with its battlements as a sawtooth top edge, which makes a good standing shape if it is glued to a folded strip.

Published 29 August 2026Updated 29 August 2026649 words