Runway with an Airplane Coloring Page

Most runway coloring pages show the runway as a strip behind an aircraft. This one turns it around: the strip runs straight away from you up the middle of the sheet, narrowing as it goes, with a dashed center line marching into the distance and rows of round edge lights standing on both sides. The airplane sits low on the page, seen head on, wings stretching almost the full width. A free printable page for ages 4 to 10, and the clearest lesson in perspective in this whole set.

How this coloring page was created

For this page, we entered the concept: "one bold simple runway running away up the page with a dashed center line and a light on each side, with a small simple airplane touching down on it" on Colorin AI and generated a print ready coloring page in seconds.

We asked for one light on each side and got five on each side. That was the better answer: a single pair of lights would have sat there as two dots, while five pairs marching into the distance is what actually builds the sense of depth. The dashed center line does the same job, since the dashes get shorter and closer together the further up the page they go.

What is in this runway coloring page

Perspective is drawn here rather than described. The two edges of the runway are not parallel, they lean toward each other and would meet somewhere above the top of the sheet.

That makes the page useful for more than coloring. A child who has never thought about why a road looks narrow in the distance can see it laid out in straight lines, and the lights on either side prove it by shrinking as they recede.

Counted out: nine dashes run up the center line, the nearest ones tall rectangles and the furthest barely a tick. Ten edge lights stand along the sides, five to the left and five to the right, each drawn as a ball on a short stem with a flared foot. The aircraft below shows two engines slung under long straight wings, a nose wheel and two main wheels each with paired tires, a rounded nose cone and a tall fin rising directly behind it. Two more lights sit in front of the wings, closer to the viewer and noticeably larger than the rest.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

Runway markings are white on dark asphalt, and keeping to that here does the page a favor. A mid gray on the strip with the dashes left blank makes the center line read instantly, and gray is the one color that will not fight the aircraft for attention.

Color the edge lights in a warm color and vary the strength: bright on the two nearest, paler on the ones further up. Real approach lights are white or yellow, and fading them is the cheapest way to add distance to a flat drawing.

Leave the grass on either side of the strip pale. It occupies the outer thirds of the page, and a strong green there pulls the eye away from the perspective, which is the only thing this page is really about.

Frequently Asked Questions