Free Printable Coloring Pages that Look Like Real Animals

When my kids were younger I was always on the lookout for activities to keep them busy and enhance their creativity. Coloring books became a staple of the toy box. They went through new coloring books each week like they were candy. I got to the point that I would often tear out pages and take them to work and make copies of them since the kids often wanted to color the same or similar pages over and over again. The coloring books are not cheap anymore so I looked for ways to cut costs. Free coloring books are what every parent hopes to find one day but never does. Since they were young I always felt they were just making a mess out of coloring books that I paid good money for.

Their ability to not make a mess out of the coloring books had thankfully ended when they got past the preschool age. They started to want only animals to color. They expressed disappointment if I got the coloring books with the cutesy animals in them. They wanted the lifelike ones. So I began my quest to find lifelike animal coloring books for them to color that did not cost an arm and a leg. I had no idea that they were that hard to find. Most of the animal drawings were Disney types so they would not do. I soon resorted to the internet and found not only some great free coloring pages but the drawings were often better than the store bought ones. Here are some of my finds for free lifelike animal pages to print out and color.

Animal coloring pages
This site has a wide variety of animal drawings to choose from. Many of them are lifelike but there still is a large portion of them that are cartoon animal drawings.

The National Geographic coloring book
This is by far the best website for lifelike animal coloring pages. It is complex enough for older children to really enjoy the artwork. The artwork can also be utilized in other crafts like making fabric transfers.