Accordion Squeezing Coloring Page

This Accordion Squeezing Coloring Page shows the instrument mid squeeze, held between two hands with the pleated bellows folded in the middle and a button board on each side. A decorated band runs across the top of the bellows. A free printable accordion coloring page for kids ages 4 to 10. It is the widest drawing in this collection, and the pleats give a child a set of long even stripes to work through, which is unusually satisfying to color.

How this coloring page was created

For this page, we entered the concept: "An accordion held upright with folded bellows and rows of buttons, squeezed between two hands" on Colorin AI and generated a print ready coloring page in seconds. The diamond patterned band along the top edge came back with it.

"Squeezed between two hands" is what gave the drawing its life. An accordion asked for on its own sits flat like a box with a concertina in the middle, and there is no sense of it being played. Adding the hands put the two side boards at slight angles, as though they are being pushed together, and it explains why the bellows are folded rather than stretched. It also stopped the generator from drawing a whole person, which would have shrunk the instrument to a detail.

About this accordion coloring page

The hands are drawn as hands only, cut off at the wrist. That sounds like a compromise and it is the right call: a full figure would have taken two thirds of the page and left the accordion too small to color, and this way the instrument stays the subject.

The bellows are the other thing this page gets right. They are drawn as long tapering pleats that meet in a zigzag at the top and bottom edges, which is what real bellows do when they close.

Here is the count. The bellows in the middle hold about fourteen vertical pleats, each a long narrow panel, meeting the top and bottom edges in a row of sharp zigzag points. Above them a curved band carries a repeating pattern of seven diamonds with a small dot between each pair. The left board holds roughly eighteen round buttons arranged in three curved columns, and the right board holds about ten in two columns. Both boards are drawn as blocks with a chamfered top and a visible side face, and each has a grille panel at its outer edge. Two hands grip the instrument, one on each side, each with four fingers wrapped over the board and a thumb tucked behind, and a strap loops behind each hand. Two short feet sit under the bellows where the folds end.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

Traditional accordions are black and red with white buttons, and copying that gives a page that looks right in three colors. Alternating the fourteen pleats between two shades is the other route, and it turns the bellows into a stripe pattern that reads as motion.

The twenty eight buttons are the slow part. Leaving them all white against dark boards is fastest and looks like a real instrument. Coloring them in two alternating colors takes longer and turns the boards into the most interesting part of the page. The seven diamonds on the band are small: those are for a pencil, not a marker. The hands are best left pale so they do not compete with the instrument.

Have you got an accordion in the family? Turn a photo into a coloring page and print it as a page to color.