Witch colouring page

A witch seen entirely from behind on a broomstick, with no face drawn at all and a long scalloped cloak.

A witch flies across the page on a broomstick, seen from directly behind. Nothing of the face is visible, and none is drawn: the figure is a tall pointed hat with a broad brim and a plain buckled band, and below it a long cloak that opens out into a wide scalloped hem. The broom handle points up and to the left, out past the cloak, and the bristles are at the lower right, drawn as a bundle of many separate strands held by two binding rings. There is no background, no moon and no ground line — the whole figure sits on white paper.

This drawing is a very open one, and it comes down to two shapes: the hat and the cloak. The cloak is by far the larger, a broad sweeping field broken only by a few fold lines running down it, and the hat is a tall cone with a brim. Everything else on the sheet is small. It means a strong colour decision on the cloak effectively decides the whole page.

The fold lines in the cloak are drawn rather than implied, and they are the key to making the fabric look like fabric. Colouring each panel between two fold lines a slightly different depth of the same colour — lighter where the cloth would face you, darker where it turns away — takes one pencil and a change of pressure, and it turns a flat sweep into something with movement in it.

The scalloped hem is the second-longest lane on the sheet and it runs the width of the figure. Following it with a darker edge, a narrow band inside the hem line, gives the cloak a border and stops the bottom of the drawing dissolving into the white paper below it. That is worth doing on a page with no ground line, because there is nothing else holding the figure down.

The broom bristles are the fine work: many separate strands, each closed at the top and open towards the tip. They can be filled individually, or a light wash can be laid across all of them with a few pressed harder, which reads as straw at a fraction of the effort. The two binding rings are small closed bands and are the natural place for a colour that appears nowhere else on the sheet.

Black cloak, black hat, gold buckle and straw-coloured bristles is the obvious version and the drawing suits it. It is also worth knowing that a fully black cloak swallows all those fold lines, which are the best thing in the drawing — a very dark purple, blue or green keeps the folds visible and still reads as a witch from across a room. That is a real trade rather than a preference.

The one thing worth saying about the drawing itself is why there is no face. Every human figure on this site is drawn either from behind, with the features hidden, or with the face left out, and that is a rule the drawings follow rather than an accident of this one. Here it also makes the sheet simpler to colour: with no features to preserve, the hat and the cloak can be treated as pure shape.

Print at actual size on plain A4 paper so the broom strands stay separate. Fit-to-page merges them into a solid block, which is the one part of the drawing that cannot afford it. If markers are the plan, a sheet of card is worth loading, because a dark cloak covering half the page is a lot of ink in one place. Cut out along the outline and the figure comes away in one piece with the broom attached, and it is a strong silhouette to tape in a window.

Published 29 August 2026Updated 29 August 2026629 words