Day of the Dead Celebration Coloring Page

Day of the Dead Celebration Coloring Page puts two people in full face paint at the centre of the holiday. Both wear crowns of roses, both have their faces painted as calaveras, papel picado hangs above them, candles burn at the left and a great heap of marigolds fills the space below.

How this coloring page was created

The concept we sent was "A festive celebration scene with people in catrina face paint, banners, candles and marigolds" into Colorin AI, in the storybook style. A crowd shrinks every face to nothing on a printed page, so the scene was drawn as two people close up with the celebration around them.

The bunting at the top carries butterflies and a star rather than skulls, which came from the generator and stayed: it keeps the top of the page lighter than the bottom.

About this day of the dead coloring page

Painting your face as a calavera is what most people outside Mexico picture first, and it is genuinely part of the holiday now, though a more recent part than the altars and the flowers.

The two faces here are drawn as painted skin, not bone: the eyes are ringed with petals and dots, the noses are inked as small hearts, and stitch marks run out from the corners of both mouths.

She has long wavy hair under a crown of ten roses; he has short hair and a smaller crown. Both wear plain clothes with no pattern, which keeps the attention on the faces.

Below them a mound of round marigolds fills the bottom quarter of the page, and two candles stand at the left edge with wax running down.

Above, three papel picado flags hang from a line strung corner to corner. Between the flowers below and the paper above, the two figures sit inside the holiday rather than in front of a backdrop.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

Paint the faces white and colour only the ringed eyes, the nose and the stitch marks. Colouring the whole face in a skin tone undoes the entire design.

Give her roses and his roses the same two colours in a different order. Matching crowns look like uniforms; shared colours look like a family.

The marigold heap is the one place to work fast and loose. Two oranges scattered across dozens of round blooms, no plan, and it will look better than a careful job.

Keep the clothing quiet. One flat colour each, nothing patterned, so the crowns and the faces stay in front.

The bunting is small enough for three flat colours and no more. It is the last thing to colour and the first thing to overdo.

Print two copies if there are two children. Each can colour one of the faces on both sheets and swap, which produces two pages that neither of them could have made alone.

A word on the face paint if a child asks whether they can do it themselves: the pattern on this page is the standard one, petals around the eyes, a heart at the nose, stitches at the mouth, and it works with ordinary face paint. Colouring it first is a decent way to plan.

This is one of two pages in the set carrying the main Day of the Dead keyword. The other is the dancing skeleton couple, and the pair covers both halves of the holiday: the people who celebrate it and the dead they celebrate.