Horse in a Field Coloring Page

About this coloring page

A horse standing side on in a field, with a flowing mane and tail. The mane and tail are drawn as a few thick locks rather than individual hairs, which is what makes this page finishable: real horse hair would be a nightmare to color and most drawings of horses get it wrong in exactly that way. Those locks are also the best part of the page, because doing them in a different color from the body is what turns a brown horse into a picture. The body is one large shape and the legs are separate, so a child can give the horse socks without any careful edging. Horses come in a genuinely wide range of real colors, which is worth mentioning: chestnut, grey, black, palomino and piebald are all correct answers, and knowing that gives a child permission to choose rather than copy. Printed at A4 the horse fills the width of the sheet. It suits a slightly older child than most of our animals, mainly because of the legs. Printed as a horse coloring sheet at A3 rather than A4, the mane and tail become wide enough to shade in two tones, which is worth it for an older child.

Color suggestions

• Chestnut body, black mane and tail
• Palomino: cream body, white mane
• Grey with darker legs
• Green field, pale sky

Did you know?

• Horses sleep standing up using a mechanism called the stay apparatus, which locks the joints in their legs so the muscles can relax without the animal falling over. They only lie down for deep sleep, and rarely for long.
• With eyes on the sides of the head a horse sees almost all the way around itself, but has two blind spots: directly in front of its nose and directly behind its tail. This is why approaching a horse from behind startles it.