Viking Longship Coloring Page

This Viking Longship Coloring Page features a dragon head carved on the prow, a row of round shields hung along the side and four oars dipping into curling waves, with a wide square sail filling the top of the sheet. The stern behind the sail rolls up into a spiral, so the ship reads from end to end as one long curve. It is a free printable viking ship coloring page for children from 4 to 10, and it fits a history lesson, a longship craft or an afternoon of coloring at the kitchen table.

How this coloring page was created

The line behind this page is "A viking longship with a curved prow rising high, round shields along the side and a square sail filling the top of the page". It went into Colorin AI and the print ready coloring page came back in seconds, with the sail across the top, the shields in the middle and the oars and water along the bottom.

"Curved prow rising high" is the part of the line that gave the ship its dragon head, lifted well above the rest of the hull so the front of the page has something to look at. Asking for the sail to fill the top kept the mast short and the canvas wide, which leaves a broad panel of straight edged space above a busy, detailed hull.

What makes this viking ship coloring page unique

The shields are the part children go to first. Each one is a circle with a raised boss in the middle, and the faces mix a cross and upright stripes, so the row along the side turns into five small puzzles sitting in a line.

Because every shield is closed and round, a child can finish one, stop, and come back to the next without losing the place, which makes this a good page for a short sitting as well as a long one.

Five shields hang along the rail. Three of them are quartered by a cross and two are filled with upright stripes, and all five have a ring and a round boss at the center. Below them four oars slant down to the right, each one a shaft with a rounded blade at the end.

The sail is split into five panels by four lines running from the spar to the foot, and the spar above is capped with a round knob at each end and ringed with pairs of lines along its length. A small pennant with a notched tail flies from the masthead, the hull is planked in long curved boards, and the water below is drawn as rolling bands with spiral curls at every crest.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

The shields invite a different color on every one. Red and white quarters on the first, blue and yellow stripes on the second, and so on down the line, which turns the rail into the brightest band on the page while the hull stays one steady wood tone.

For the sail, two colors alternating panel by panel give the classic striped look, and a single warm color across all five panels makes the canvas read as one piece and pushes the eye back to the shields. Leaving the spiral curls in the water white, with blue filled in around them, makes the foam stand out.

A toy longship or a model on a shelf can be the next page: snap a photo and convert the photo into a printable page with your own ship on it.

Frequently Asked Questions