Santa colouring page

Santa drawn from behind in a belted coat with fur cuffs, a pointed hat with a pom-pom, and a sack over one shoulder.

Santa is drawn from behind on this sheet. He wears a belted coat with a band of fur at the hem and at both cuffs, a pointed hat with a pom-pom hanging from the tip, and he carries a sack tied at the neck over one shoulder. No face is drawn, because from this angle there is no face to draw. He is walking away from whoever is looking at him, and every line on the page describes the back of him.

A back view reduces the figure to one readable silhouette, and that shape holds together through the uses a sheet like this can be put to. It can go on the front of a card with a greeting written in above the figure. It can be cut out and hung in a window so the shape reads from the street. Cut smaller and punched through the hat, it becomes a gift tag with a clear back for a name. Coloured flat and left on the table, it fills the stretch between the wrapping and the meal.

The coat is the largest area on the page, and the belt cuts it into two unequal fields: a wide back above and a shorter skirt below. If red goes down on it, lay the colour in one direction across both fields rather than filling them separately, because a change of stroke direction at the belt line will show once the whole coat is covered. A second, darker pass along the side away from the light rounds the back out and stops it from reading as a flat shape.

The fur at the hem and the cuffs is the one place on this drawing where doing less gets more. Left as bare paper, it already reads as white fur against a filled coat. A light grey, applied only where the band turns under at the bottom edge and inside each cuff, gives it depth without making it look soiled. Short strokes running outward from the coat suggest the texture; a solid line drawn all the way around the fur takes that softness straight back out again.

The pointed hat should carry the same colour as the coat and be filled in the same sitting, while the pressure of the hand is still consistent, since a mismatch between hat and coat shows from across a room. The point falls over to one side, and the fold where it bends is worth a slightly darker touch. The pom-pom at the tip belongs with the fur rather than the hat: bare paper with a curve of grey tucked under it is enough to make it sit as a ball instead of a circle.

The sack is tied at the neck and slung over one shoulder, and its folds run outward from that tie. Following those folds with the direction of the strokes is what makes it read as cloth rather than a bag-shaped area. A tan, a soft brown, or a dull green all suit it, and any of them keeps it clearly apart from the coat. The knot itself is small and busy, so leaving a little white between the tie and the gathered fabric below stops the two from merging into one shape.

The belt is a dark band across the middle of the figure, and it carries most of the structure on this sheet. Filled in near-black, it splits the two halves of the coat and lets the whole silhouette read at a glance. The buckle should stay lighter than everything touching it. A pale yellow, or a square of untouched white left inside the dark band, will look like metal on its own, and lines added inside the buckle generally cost more than they return.

Because no face is drawn, nothing on the sheet fixes what he looks like, and nothing has to come out right for the figure to work. There is no skin tone to settle on and no expression to colour around, which removes the part of a character drawing that is hardest to recover from once it has gone wrong. What remains is a silhouette built from a few large fields, and large fields are forgiving. The sack stays tied, so whatever is inside it is left to whoever is colouring.

We laid the file out at A4 with the figure centred and white space on all four sides, so it prints unscaled and there is a margin for scissors if the shape is going to be cut free. Heavier card holds a punched hole for a tag and will not curl once a large red area has been filled in. On thin paper, work the coat with a lighter hand, since the biggest field is where a marker is most likely to soak through.

Published 28 August 2026Updated 28 August 2026798 words