Did you see NBC Nightly News last night? They had a story about the popularity of adult coloring books. (Thinking Outside of the Crayon Box, Adults Use Coloring Books as Stress-ReducerHere’s the story.)  They mentioned the number one coloring book, Secret Garden by Johanna Basford, which I referenced in my post It’s Okay for You to Color Too (Coloring is not just for kids!) back in April. Well, what timing! I actually had planned this freebie coloring page post for Friday, but got tied up in a bunch of things, and then this weekend was Mother’s Day, so now it is Tuesday’s topic.

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Remember the Zentangle flowers I told you I was working on back in April? Well, I finally finished them! The wrinkling I’d mentioned (from someone stepping on it) wasn’t too bad after being flattened by a Fire Mountain Gems catalog for a week.

Here’s a version I colored with my daughter’s colored pencils:

[Click to go to the bottom for download.]

The original drawing was an odd size and I thought it would be nice to make it so that you could frame it if you’d like to. I sized it so the coloring image is 8×10 inches, on a page that is 8.5×11. (So when you print the PDF, make sure not to scale it unless you want it smaller.) I really didn’t want to crop anything out, so instead I added more to the drawing at the top and bottom (okay, my top and bottom, with the orientation I have chosen for the image!) from within PaintShopPro. As you know, this is my go-to drawing tool over Photoshop. I was so excited to actually use my drawing tablet for this! I used to have an ancient serial port tablet that I loved, but when I got my new PC a while back it didn’t have a serial port on it so I didn’t have one for quite a while! I finally got a new Wacom tablet for my birthday, but haven’t had too many opportunities to use it yet. If you haven’t used one before, it’s a lot of fun! You may have used a drawing tool on your iPad or Kindle or other touch device that supports pressure-sensitive drawing. This PC accessory allows me to adjust how lines are affected when I adjust the pressure and tilt on the pen. I can make the lines fatter, denser, and/or more opaque, or I can even adjust the hue or saturation or lightness. There are so many cool things you can do with it and I’ve just barely scratched the surface so far! I especially like to use it because I’m a lefty, and while I can point and click with my right hand as well as any righty, I’m not so good at detailed drawing with the right-handed mouse.

If you look at the blank, black and white coloring page at the bottom of the post you’ll see more than what is in the colored samples. Can you tell what was done with the pen and ink on paper versus what was done on the computer? I don’t think I can! The tablet also works well for cleaning up the scanned image and fixing any goofs. I had a goof in this one. See if you can find part of the image that is different in the final coloring page versus the colored examples. Can you see what I erased? (I’ll put the answer at the bottom.)

I did another printout of the original JPEG at approximately 4×6 (two on the page) and colored them both. I thought they might be nice for a homemade card. I colored both of these with Sharpies. I discovered that using the gray pen gave a nice shadow effect to give the flowers depth. Can you see the gray in there?

I love how you get such a different outcome each time! Again, these were done before the resize. Of course, scaling down 8×10 does not give you 4×6 (come on, you can do the math). In the PDF, I’ve included a second page that has a 2-up scaled down version which is actually 4 13/16 x 6. I included crop marks fairly centered on the design indicating the 4×6 size, but you can use the whole image or crop wherever you want to!

As always, you are free to download for personal use only. No uploading the PDF or another format for download from your website or social media account! If you display a colored or lo-res non-colored version on your website (or social media account), please include the entire image, including the copyright and path to the original file, and include credit to me and this web site URL in the picture description and the blog text. And no selling, colored or not! If you want any of my coloring pages for commercial use, please contact me.

Note that the watermark doesn’t appear in the downloaded image.

Okay, here’s the PDF file for download: Download

I’m really liking a few of the flowers in there more than others, so I think I’ll have to incorporate them into another drawing soon. Which are your favorites? If you color one, send it to me or post it on my Facebook page so we can see it!

If you like these, check out my other coloring pages.

New to coloring and want to know where to start? Check out my post of recommended coloring books and my post of recommended coloring supplies.

Also, check out my Coloring for Grown Ups board on Pinterest for more coloring pages I’ve collected… and follow me while you are there!

Follow Cynthia Caldwell @ Yet Another Mom Blog’s board Coloring for Grown Ups on Pinterest.

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Here’s the answer to my question above: Look at the big lacy flower. Between it and the rose-like flower at one o’clock are big leaves (or more flower petals, depending on how you color them). These are outlined in a very heavy line. On one of the leaves, I had two lines. It was because I originally had more detail on those leaves/petals, but it seemed too much, so I erased them on the paper version and I missed a spot. There is actually one more mistake in the final version on a section that was added on the computer (so that’s a hint – it’s near the edge). Can you find it?