A tiger prowls between tall bamboo stalks and turns its head to look straight ahead. Stripes, whiskers and a steady stare are the stars of this tiger coloring page, a favorite for anyone who loves powerful animals and wants to test how an orange changes with the pressure of the pencil.
The tiger walks sideways, but its head swings toward the viewer with narrowed eyes and whiskers drawn one by one. Stripes wrap around the back and legs in bands that narrow toward the ends, while bamboo leaves cross in front of and behind the body. That creates several layers and makes you decide which part sits in light and which in shadow.
Intended for kids from ten to fourteen. The stripes are already marked, which makes them easy to follow, so the work is mostly color and shading. For someone just moving into detailed animals this is a friendly first tiger, and experienced colorists can spend time on the contrast between stripes, pale fur and shadow.
Download the PDF for your paper and confirm the scale is one hundred percent before printing. The drawing has dark lines close together, so normal or high quality keeps them from clogging. Medium-weight paper handles several layers of orange without wrinkling or turning shiny.
Color the whole body with a light orange first, then add a stronger orange along the back and under the belly. Leave the chest, the inner legs and the ear edges cream or white. If the bamboo is green, use a darker green behind the animal so the tiger pops forward.
The background is so attractive that it could steal the animal's thunder. To prevent that, use cooler, quieter greens on the bamboo and save the warm colors for the tiger. Color each stalk in three tones, a light one in the middle and two darker ones at the sides, so it reads as a cylinder. Leaves far away can be a very soft bluish green, and closer ones a stronger green with small shadows. Before you start, test your greens on scrap paper, because bamboo shifts a lot between a light yellow-green and a deep forest tone, and you will want the stalks to feel a step quieter than the animal itself.
No. Every tiger has its own pattern, as unique as a fingerprint. That means you can choose how thick or spaced your stripes look and still be faithful to reality.
Soft-core pencils give more intensity with less pressure. Try layering a yellow, then an orange, then a touch of red, and you will get a deeper color than any single pencil can offer.
The PDFs are made for Letter and A4. If you want a poster, a copy shop can enlarge it, but staying with the original size keeps the lines sharpest.
