Sugar Skull With Paisley Patterns Coloring Page

Sugar Skull With Paisley Patterns Coloring Page fills the whole face with interlocking teardrops. Paisley shapes of every size nest into one another across the forehead, cheeks and jaw, with a scatter of small flowers along the top of the head.

How this coloring page was created

The concept we sent was "A sugar skull decorated entirely with interlocking paisley teardrops and curling patterns" into Colorin AI, in the zentangle style. Paisley is built from one shape repeated at different scales, which makes it the easiest dense pattern to colour and the hardest to draw.

The generator turned the eye sockets into paisleys as well, each one a large teardrop lying on its side, and that is what makes the page hold together.

Details of this sugar skull paisley coloring page

Every element on this skull is a teardrop. The eyes, the nose, the shapes across the brow and the ones running down both cheeks are all the same form at different sizes and angles.

The larger paisleys carry smaller ones inside them, and the smallest are filled with rows of dots, which is the standard way the pattern is built.

Along the top of the head sit five small open flowers with rounded petals, the only shapes on the page that are not teardrops.

The nose is a heart with a curl on either side, and the teeth are a row of narrow rectangles beneath a scalloped band.

The face is symmetrical left to right, so every paisley on one side has a mirror on the other.

There is no border and no background, which suits a page where the pattern already runs to every edge of the subject.

Coloring Ideas and Techniques

Colour each large paisley in one tone and leave the small shapes inside it white. That contrast is the whole look of the pattern.

Three or four colours, rotated across the page so no two touching paisleys match. It takes a minute of planning and saves the drawing.

The two eye paisleys should be the darkest shapes on the page. They are the eyes, and they need to stay readable under all the pattern.

Leave the flowers along the top white or give them one pale colour. They are a break from the teardrops and should look like one.

Do not fill the gaps between the paisleys. The white background between shapes is what lets the pattern breathe.

Work in symmetry: colour a shape, then colour its mirror on the other side immediately. It is much easier than trying to match later.

If you have coloured the filigree page in this same set, this one will feel familiar and take about half as long.

Paisley has nothing to do with Mexico, and that is worth knowing rather than hiding. Decorated calaveras borrow whatever pattern is to hand, and paisley has been turning up on them for decades because the teardrop happens to fit the curve of a skull.

For a quicker version, colour only the paisleys that touch the outline of the skull and leave the interior white. The face still reads and the page takes twenty minutes instead of an hour.