Sombrero with a Sugar Skull Coloring Page

Sombrero with a Sugar Skull Coloring Page draws the hat straight on: a wide brim running the full width of the page, a tall rounded crown above it and a band of flowers where the two meet, with a small sugar skull sitting just under the brim.

How this coloring page was created

We asked for "One bold simple wide sombrero decorated with a flower and a band, resting next to a small sugar skull" into Colorin AI, in the minimalist style. Seen from the front rather than the side, a sombrero becomes a symmetrical shape that fills a page instead of a long thin one that does not.

The flower band came back as seven small blooms with leaves between them, packed tight around the base of the crown. It is the only busy part of an otherwise very plain drawing.

What is in this sombrero coloring page

A sombrero is a working hat before it is a party one: the wide brim is shade, and the height of the crown is what keeps air moving. Both are drawn accurately here.

The brim is a single long oval seen slightly from above, with a double line along its outer edge and a soft dip at the sides.

The crown rises above it as a tall rounded shape with no pattern at all, which is unusual in this collection and makes the flower band below it stand out.

Beneath the brim sits a small sugar skull with flower eyes, a heart nose and a row of teeth, drawn at about a quarter of the size of the hat.

Nothing else is on the page. Three shapes, one band of flowers, and a lot of white.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

Straw is the obvious choice for the hat and the best one. A light tan across brim and crown, then the same pencil pressed harder along the underside of the brim, gives it weight.

The flower band is where the colour goes. Seven small blooms in three rotating colours reads as a real hatband and takes a minute.

Leave a thin white line where the crown meets the brim. It is what separates the two shapes once both are coloured, and it is easily lost.

The small skull below can take the brightest colours in the box without unbalancing anything, because everything above it is quiet.

For a party version, colour the crown in stripes running from the top down. Real decorated sombreros are often finished exactly that way.

This page also enlarges well for a wall. The shapes are big and simple enough that it still reads from across a room.

The hat also works as a cut out. Colour it, cut around the brim and tape it to a paper plate and it becomes a passable prop for a school celebration, which is more than most coloring pages manage.

If a child wants to personalise it, the crown is a blank surface the size of a postcard. A name, a pattern of dots, initials, anything fits there without crowding the flower band below.

Printed alongside the sugar skull with a sombrero from the cartoon batch, the two make an obvious pair: the hat on its own and the hat being worn.