Pirate colouring page

A treasure chest heaped with plain coins, a skull flag, a tricorn hat and a blank rolled map on one sheet.

Four objects share this page and none of them is a person. An open treasure chest stands in the middle, its curved lid swung back, a plain lock plate with a keyhole on the front, and a heap of round coins filling it to the brim with nothing stamped on any of them. Behind it and to the left, a flag on a pole with a ball at the top carries a skull with two filled eye sockets and a pair of crossed bones. A tricorn hat lies in front of the chest at the left, and a rolled map tied with a ribbon lies at the right, left completely blank with no writing on it anywhere.

The coin heap is the busiest part of the drawing and the part that decides how long the sheet takes. Every coin is a separate closed circle and there are enough of them that filling each one individually is a long job. The fast alternative reads just as well: colour the inside of the chest dark first, then fill only the coins along the front edge of the heap, leaving the ones behind them white so they catch the light.

The chest itself is three large panels — the front, the visible end, and the underside of the raised lid — and they are the broadest areas on the sheet. Because they are separated by strong outlines they can take three tones of one colour without any blending, and that is the quickest way to make a flat box look like a box with sides.

The flag is the one place where the drawing has already committed to black: the two eye sockets are filled. That gives you a reference tone for everything else. A flag left white with only its skull coloured is the most legible version, since the skull is a small shape and needs the paper around it; filling the flag dark instead pushes the skull forward but asks for a very steady edge along the pole.

The map is deliberately empty. There is no writing, no coastline and no cross on it, which means it is a blank rectangle in the drawing and anything you put there is your own. It is also the only object on the page with a long straight lane in it — the rolled edge — and a single stroke down that lane is enough to make the paper look curled.

Browns for the chest, gold for the coins, black for the flag and a red band on the hat is the reading the subject suggests. The one thing worth keeping honest is the contrast between the coin heap and the chest interior, because that contrast is what makes the heap read as a heap rather than as a pattern. Everything else on the page can go anywhere.

A small drawing point is worth noticing on the hat. A tricorn is a hat whose brim is turned up on three sides and pinned, which is why the shape here is a long wavy curve rather than a round brim — the drawing gives you the two upturned edges nearest the viewer as separate lanes, and colouring them a shade darker than the crown is what makes the fold visible.

Print at actual size on plain A4 paper. The coin edges are the first thing a smaller print merges, and once they merge the heap becomes one grey shape. If markers are the plan, use them on the chest panels and the flag and keep a pencil for the coins. Cut apart, the four objects become four separate pieces: the flag is the tallest, the map is the smallest, and the chest is sturdy enough to be glued to a folded strip and stood upright.

Published 29 August 2026Updated 29 August 2026630 words