Introducing children to the world of art and creativity can be both fun and educational. With the rise of digital technology, a plethora of apps now offers young minds the chance to explore their artistic talents from the comfort of their own devices. This blog post highlights a variety of painting and coloring apps that are designed to nurture creativity, enhance fine motor skills, and provide a rich palette of interactive and educational content for children.
Colouring Apps for Kids
These apps are not just about coloring within the lines; they’re about inspiring imagination, developing critical thinking through art, and making learning an enjoyable experience. From simple color by numbers to intricate drawing lessons, each app has something unique to offer, making them perfect tools for young artists to express themselves and for parents and educators to facilitate this expression.
1. Baby Colouring Book for Kids
This is a colouring game that engages kids in colouring activities intended to develop their fine motor skills and logic. The app embeds 9 topic packs with 135 pages. It also contains a wide variety of drawing lessons to help kids learn drawing from scratch.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
2. Pixel Art: Paint by Number
Pixel Art is a colouring app that enables students to colour a wide variety of pixel artworks. Using Flower Garden feature, students will get to build their own gardens, colour its objects and receive rewards. The app also offers numerous events with thematic pictures and original artworks for students to colour. Pixel Art supports 3D colouring allowing students to engage in colouring 3D images.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 12+
3. Colorscapes
This is a fun colouring game that provides users with a wide range of colouring objects and artworks to colour. The app’s library contains over 3000 works spanning various categories including Animals, People, Landscapes, Mandalas, and more. Besides guides and tips to help users hone in their colouring and art skills, the app also provides custom suggestions and adds new artwork on almost a daily basis.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 12+
4. Happy Colour
Happy Colour is a colour by number game featuring numerous fun and entertaining characters to colour. There are over 15000 free pictures spanning 15 categories including animals, places, hobbies, flowers, people, mosaic, mandala, horoscopes, fantasy, art, and more. ‘Coloring has never been so easy, all pictures are marked by numbers. Open your colour by number book and rediscover the simple relaxation and joy of colouring. Paint and share your favourite adult colouring pages with friends and family, let everyone see your fantastic colouring pages!’
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 12+
5. Colouring Book! Paint by Number
This paint by number colouring book offers access to a huge library of free colouring pages for kids to work on. The app also makes it super easy for kids to paint their artwork. ‘Each picture has light blue or grey lines indicate areas to paint, and each area has a number and a corresponding numbered paint to use. Just follow the numbers and colouring has never been easier!’
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
6. Happy Canvas: Colour by Number
Happy Canvas is another fun colouring game for kids. The app offers a large collection of pictures covering topics such as birds, vehicles, food, nature, horoscopes, patterns, buildings, and more. Each of the featured pictures contain numbers which correspond to a specific colour. ‘Color the drawing by the numbers from the palette and create a colourful picture that can be shared with friends.’
Compatibility: iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
7. Tap Colour- Paint by Number
Tap Colour is a colouring and painting game that enables users to draw their own artwork based on numbers. The app also offers various colouring pages in different collections. Users can tap on numbers in the pictures and follow clues to complete their colouring and painting activity. Progress is auto-saved so that users can resume their work later.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
8. Cat Kitty Kitten Coloring Book
Cat Kitty is another colour book featuring various colouring activities. Some of the features it offers include: a freehand drawing mode, a colour fill mode to fill specific parts with desired colours, erase mode to fine erase or reset colouring, save and share your works with others, and more. Cat Kitty also offers the ability to play relaxing music in the background or use your background music.
Compatibility:iOS (Android alternative) / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
9. Pony Unicorn Coloring Book
Pony Unicorn helps kids develop their colouring skills. The app offers two main modes: a finger drawing mode which enables kids to colour images by drawing with their fingers on selected areas, and a 1-touch colour mode which allows users to tap anywhere on the coloring page to fill the corresponding image part with the selected color.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
10. ABC Coloring Book-EduPaint
ABC Colouring Book contains various colouring pages and painting games to help kids learn colours, shapes, alphabet letters, and numbers. There are over 18 different games and quizzes covering numerous topics from learning how to paint facial expressions and emotions to learning how to identify patterns. The app also supports several languages including Arabic, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and more.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
11. Coloring book: Draw Animals
This app features colouring pages with pictures of animals for kids to colour. There are pictures of birds, fish, insects, mammals, and more. Kids can also draw their own animal pictures and colour them the way they want using over 60 different colours. Kids can save their artwork to the gallery of their devices and share them with others.
Compatibility:iOS (Android alternative) / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
12. Tap Color Pro: Color by Number
This is a number colouring game where users experiment with different colouring pages containing over 3000 free pictures. Popular categories include animals (e.g., birds, cats, puppies, wild animals, etc), flowers, special animated pictures, inspiring quotes to colour, mandalas, and more.
Compatibility:iOS and Android / Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
13. Coloring book for kids 2-6
This is another good colouring and painting app for kids. It offers 5 thematic sets with 75 coloring pages that kids can work on using a huge collection of tools (e.g., pencils, brushes, paints, strokes, etc). ‘The game is designed specifically for preschoolers. All drawings and assignments include educational elements for the development of logic and fine motor skills.’
Compatibility:iOS (Android alternative)/ Price: Free, offers in-app purchases / Age: 4+
Final thoughts
This collection of painting and coloring apps provides a fantastic resource for children to express their creativity while developing essential skills like fine motor coordination and hand-eye coordination. Through engaging game-based activities and a diverse array of coloring pages, these apps not only keep children entertained but also enhance their artistic abilities and expand their imaginative capabilities. Whether your child is drawing animals, creating vibrant mandalas, or filling in animated scenes, each app offers a unique opportunity to explore and learn through art.
