Dojo with a Ninja Coloring Page

Print this dojo coloring page in seconds and you get a whole wooden training hall: an open rafter roof, two sliding paper doors gridded into panes, a hanging scroll between them and tatami mats running forward to the edge of the sheet. A young ninja holds a wide stance in the middle. A free printable page for ages 5 to 11, and a good one for a child who has just started martial arts classes.

How this coloring page was created

For this page, we entered the concept: 'a wooden training dojo with mats in front, a ninja practicing a pose in the middle and sliding paper doors with a hanging scroll behind' on Colorin AI and generated a print ready coloring page in seconds. The roof beams came back exposed, which is what gives the hall its depth.

The deciding words are 'mats in front'. Asked for a dojo on its own, the generator draws the back wall and leaves the floor as blank paper. Putting the mats in front pulled the perspective forward, so the tatami now runs from the ninja's feet down to the bottom of the page and the room feels like somewhere you are standing.

Details of this dojo coloring page

What makes this sheet unusual is that the building is the subject and the figure is small. Most martial arts pages fill the page with a fighter. Here the architecture is the drawing, and the ninja is the reason to look at it.

That suits a colorer who likes straight lines and repeated panels more than faces and hands. There is a lot of wood on this page, and wood is forgiving: any brown works, and the grain lines are already drawn.

Under the roof peak about ten rafter beams fan out from the ridge, five to each side, above a long horizontal beam studded with roughly eight short blocks. Two thick posts hold the corners. Each sliding door is a grid of about four columns by five rows, giving forty paper panes across the pair. Between them hangs a scroll: a rectangle with a triangular finial on top, a bottom rod, and inside it a circle above a three peak mountain. The raised platform behind is planked in about eight boards, the tatami floor divides into six mats in perspective, and a front row of six planks crosses the very bottom. The ninja wears a belted gi with a wide knot, one palm open and one hand fisted.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

Keep the two door grids the same pale tone and color only their frames, or the forty panes will take over the page. Rice paper is off white, so leaving the panes blank and shading only the wooden lattice is the fastest way to make the doors look right.

The scroll is the one place on the sheet for a strong color. A red sun above gray mountains is the traditional pairing and it draws the eye straight to the middle of the hall, exactly where the ninja is standing.

Want to color your own? Turn a photo of your own class into a coloring page and print your own dojo the same way.