Airplane Coloring Pages

Up, up, and away — these airplane coloring pages feature smiling cartoon planes, vintage biplanes, and propeller aircraft soaring through the clouds. Print them free for transportation units, rainy days, or little aviation fans.

About Airplanes

An airplane flies because its wings are shaped to push air down and lift the plane up as they move forward — the propeller or jet engine supplies the forward part. A propeller works like a spinning wing, screwing itself through the air and pulling the plane behind it, while a jet throws air backward hard and fast. The tail keeps everything pointed straight, and the wheels, called landing gear, fold away on many planes once the flying starts because smooth shapes slip through air best. It took barely sixty years to go from the first twelve-second flight to passengers crossing oceans in an afternoon.

The airplanes in this set span a century of flying. Biplanes, with two wings stacked, were the standard in the 1910s and 1920s, when pilots wore leather caps and goggles against the wind in open cockpits. Cargo planes are the trucks of the sky, built wide to swallow freight. Modern jets hide their engines in pods and cross oceans in hours. The grins are the artists’ addition — real airplanes save their smiling for the people inside. Pilots of open-cockpit planes also wore silk scarves, partly for warmth and partly to wipe oil from their goggles — glamour with a job to do.

All 12 Airplane Coloring Pages

Scroll down to browse every page below, or use the Print button under any image to print just that page.

A grinning cartoon airplane wearing a pilot's cap soars through fluffy clouds. Medium — great for kids.

Leather-brown for the pilot's cap, a cream or cherry-red fuselage, and a sky full of fluffy white clouds is the whole recipe. Keep the plane's body bright and the cap warm and dark — that contrast is what makes the grin under it read from across the room. The grin should stay the whitest white after the clouds themselves.

Wash the sky a gentle, even blue first and let it dry or settle before touching the clouds' gray undersides, and the clouds will stay clean. The cap's curved shape shades darker at its lower edge, like any soft hat in the sun. Color the plane before the cap if your colors are waxy, so brown smudges stay off the cream fuselage.

A cartoon propeller plane with a friendly face flies straight toward the viewer through the clouds. Medium — great for kids.

Head-on views are symmetrical, so mirror your colors: whatever the left side gets, the right side gets. A red nose, gray propeller area, and a friendly face with pink cheeks between them is the classic build, with the clouds in soft white around it. The clouds behind can graduate from white at the top to the faintest gray below, giving the face a stage.

A spinning propeller viewed from the front is mostly a blur — color the disc it sweeps in the lightest gray you have, with the blades just a touch darker inside it. That faint circle is a drawing trick animators use, and it makes the plane feel alive instead of parked.

A vintage biplane with a goggle-wearing pilot grins as it cruises past a big puffy cloud. Medium — great for kids.

Vintage biplanes wore their colors proudly: red and cream, or yellow wings over a dark fuselage, in the barnstormer tradition. The pilot's goggles take brown straps and amber lenses, and the big puffy cloud can stay white to let the old machine show off. Cream wings with red tips were a real airshow scheme, and they hold up beautifully even in crayon.

Two wings need separating, so give the upper wing the lighter shade and the lower one a step deeper, as if the top wing shades it — because it does. Short vertical strokes on the fuselage suggest the fabric-and-wood construction these planes were really made of. Keep the cloud's shading at the bottom only, or the plane will look dirty instead of airborne.

A twin-propeller airplane seen head-on, flying high between the clouds. Medium — great for kids.

Twin propellers, seen dead ahead, want strict symmetry: matching engine colors, matching propeller grays, and a body in clean white and blue between them. Fly it high — the clouds sit low in the frame, so a deeper blue around the plane suggests altitude. Leave the propeller discs' centers light, as if the engines were idling rather than roaring.

Color the two engines in lockstep, one section on the left, then the same section on the right, so the shades cannot drift apart. The propellers' blurred discs stay pale gray and perfectly round; they are the neatest circles on the page and worth a careful hand. If one engine ends up darker, warm it with a breath of the other side's shade rather than starting over.

A cheerful cartoon jet with a huge smile and landing gear down, gliding through the sky. Medium — great for kids.

A cheerful jet with its landing gear down is on final approach, so color it like one: white body, a teal or coral tail and stripe, gray gear legs, and black tires. The huge smile should stay the brightest, cleanest white on the page. Jets wear airline colors, so a single strong accent color repeated twice beats a rainbow here.

Landing gear is fiddly, so do it early with a sharp pencil — gray struts, darker tires, tiny and neat — before the big cheerful areas tempt you to rush. A horizon glow of pale peach low in the sky is a fair coloring choice here: gear down plus soft light reads as coming home at teatime.

A small cartoon plane with a pilot peeking out, drawn with simple bold shapes. Easy — best for toddlers.

Simple bold shapes and a pilot peeking out: this is a first-airplane page, and it wants first-airplane colors — one bright color for the plane, another for the propeller, and the pilot's face and cap colored in without any fuss about staying perfectly neat. The sky can be one flat, friendly blue or left white — at this size, both look finished.

Chunky crayons were made for shapes this size. The peeking pilot is the reward at the center, so color him last and brightest, and leave the plane's window area around him light so his face stands out like a face at a real window. Big shapes forgive big enthusiasm, which is precisely what this page is for.

A happy twin-prop plane with a wide smile and round landing gear, flying through the clouds. Medium — great for kids.

Wide smile, two propellers, round landing gear — this plane is a cheerful workhorse, and sunny colors fit it: a yellow or white body, dark gray propellers, and red accents on the nose and tail. The clouds can carry gentle gray bottoms so the plane stays the bright thing. Let the smile stay uncolored white so it outshines every painted part.

Round gear wheels are easy wins: black tires, one gray hub dot each, done. Keep the propeller blades a flat, even dark gray — from the side, an engine at work is a simple shape, and overcomplicating it just muddies the smile next door. The round gear and the wide smile are both circles, so the page feels happiest in round, soft coloring motions.

A vintage propeller plane shown from the side, with a big round engine and spinning prop. Medium — great for kids.

From the side, a vintage propeller plane is a profile portrait: burgundy or olive body, a big round engine cowling in the darkest shade, and a wooden-tan propeller — early propellers really were carved from laminated wood, and that warm brown is historically correct. The fuselage behind the engine can carry one calm color so the dark cowling and tan prop do the talking.

A spinning prop from the side is two blades and a suggestion: color the blades light, then add a pale gray arc sweeping through where the tips travel. You can also draw a thin stripe along the fuselage as your own airline livery — real vintage planes wore them with pride.

A cartoon biplane wearing aviator goggles flies head-on through a sky full of clouds. Medium — great for kids.

Wearing its goggles like a superhero mask, this biplane flies straight at you, so build it symmetrically in cream and orange or red. The goggle lenses are the face's eyes — teal or amber with a white shine dot each — and the clouds fill the sky around it in white.

Symmetry is the technique: color a section on one wing, then its twin on the other, all the way through. A deeper blue wash at the page's edges, lighter toward the plane, creates a gentle spotlight that aims every eye at that goggled grin. Do the goggles last, with your sharpest pencil — they are the portrait's focal point and deserve fresh eyes.

A big smiling cargo plane with two propellers comes in for a landing. Medium — great for kids.

Treat this big cargo plane as the sky's gentle giant and dress it in working colors: light gray or soft military green for the wide body, darker propellers, and a friendly face that keeps it kind. It is coming in to land, so a calm sky suits it — pale blue with low, soft clouds.

Big bodies shade like big balloons: lightest along the top, a soft band of shadow underneath, nothing harsh. Take the two propellers in matching gray and slow down for them; on a plane this size they are small, and neat work there makes the whole page look careful. Round, patient strokes suit a fuselage this wide; straight scrubbing leaves streaks on big bellies.

A cute little plane with goggles and a toothy grin zooms through the clouds. Medium — great for kids.

Goggles and a toothy grin mean this little plane is a comedian, and its colors can be too: mint, lavender, or bubblegum pink for the body, with goggles in a clashing-bright pink or orange. The clouds can go pastel to match the joke. Clouds in matching pastels keep the joke gentle rather than garish.

Leave the teeth pure white and outline the grin by coloring carefully around it — the joke lands because the teeth stay clean. A white shine dot in each goggle lens, placed in the same spot on both, keeps the face looking at you instead of cross-eyed. The grin will smudge if you rest your hand on it, so work from the wingtips inward.

A goofy smiling airplane with huge eyes, drawn with simple thick outlines. Easy — best for toddlers.

Huge eyes and thick outlines make this the easiest plane in the set, built for toddlers: color the body in one or two rainbow-bright sections, leave the great big eye whites white, and let the crayons be chunky. There is no small work here at all. If two sections share a color by accident, it simply becomes a livery — airlines do it deliberately.

The eyes are the whole face, so protect them — color the body first, then add just the dark pupils and a tiny white sparkle left inside each one. If a young colorist wants a sky, a few flat blue scribbles behind the plane are exactly enough. This is also the easiest page in the set to finish in one sitting, which makes it a kind opener.

Coloring Tips for Airplanes

• Sky backgrounds: light blue for the sky with white clouds left uncolored — or do a sunset sky in orange and pink behind a dark plane silhouette.
• Airline colors: give each plane a bold stripe livery — red, blue, or green stripes along the fuselage look like real airliners.
• Windows: color cockpit windows light blue or gray, and leave a tiny white corner uncolored for a glass shine.
• Propellers: gray blades with a red or yellow spinner cone in the center.
• Tools: crayons for the simple toddler planes; markers for bold cartoon colors (use cardstock so they don't bleed).

FAQ

Can I use these in my classroom?
Yes — free for personal and classroom use.

What size paper should I print on?
US Letter (8.5x11) works best; A4 is fine with fit-to-page enabled. Each coloring page below has its own Download and Print buttons.

Why do some airplanes have propellers and others have jet engines?
Propellers are efficient at lower speeds and shorter trips, which is why small planes and many cargo and island routes still use them — they sip fuel and can use short runways. Jets shine on long, fast, high routes where propellers lose their grip on the thin air. They are different tools, not old and new.

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