Three dog drawings, one to a sheet, and all three are the same sitting pose in the same knitted scarf. What changes is the head and the amount of line work: a dog with brows and a long muzzle, a plainer version of it, and a puppy with a rounder head and a shorter body. The scarf is the part that makes them work as colouring sheets.
The scarf is the interesting part
A dog is mostly one colour, and a sheet that is one large area to fill loses a child quickly. The scarf breaks that up. It goes round the neck as a ribbed band divided into five or six sections, with one fringed end hanging down the side of the body, so it can take stripes, two colours alternating or a different shade in every gap.
That is also the part to point at if a child says they do not know what to do. Filling a dog brown is a decision made once. Working along a ribbed scarf is a decision made half a dozen times, and it is what keeps them at the table.
The puppy and the dog are close
The puppy is drawn with a shorter body and a rounder head, and it sits in the same pose in the same scarf. Held side by side the two read as the same animal at two ages rather than as two different drawings, which is worth knowing before you print both for the same child.
If you want two sheets that look properly different, print the dog in a scarf and the puppy rather than the simple dog and the puppy. The first has brows over the eyes, a longer muzzle and a pair of stars behind it; the simple one drops all of that, which puts it closer to the puppy than the puppy is to the dog.
Line weight and paper
Chunky for anyone under about five, Standard for five to eight, Fine if an older child or an adult is going to work on the scarf with pencils. The control sits above the sheet and changes the outline thickness on all three drawings.
Use 100gsm or heavier if felt tips are coming out. The body is a large open area and marker ink crossing it will reach the sheet underneath on ordinary copier paper.
Questions
- How many dog colouring sheets are there?
- Three drawings: a sitting dog in a woolly scarf, a simpler version of the same dog with larger shapes, and a puppy in the same pose. Each one prints at three line weights.
- How is the puppy different from the dog?
- It has a rounder head and a shorter body in the same sitting pose and the same scarf, so the two are close. For two sheets that look properly different, print the dog in a scarf and the puppy rather than the simple dog and the puppy.
- Are the dog sheets a particular breed?
- No. The ears, the muzzle and the coat are drawn without breed features or markings, and there is no name on any sheet, so nothing on the page is a branded or licensed character.
- Are these free to print for a class?
- Yes. Printing is free and unlimited for home, classroom, nursery, library and church group use. You cannot sell the sheets or host the PDF files on another site.