Sugar Skull Coloring Pages

What a sugar skull is

Sugar skulls — calaveras de azúcar — are made for the Day of the Dead, Día de Muertos, on the first and second of November, when families in Mexico remember the people they have lost and welcome their spirits home. Skulls moulded from sugar are decorated with bright icing flowers, swirls and shiny foil, sometimes with a name written across the forehead, and placed on the ofrenda beside photographs, candles, marigolds and the loved one’s favourite food. They are cheerful rather than frightening, and every skull in this set is drawn that way.

Day of the Dead traditions

Several pages show the celebration itself. Papel picado — tissue paper flags cut into skulls, flowers, birds and butterflies — hangs in two rows. A round pan de muerto, the sweet bread of the season topped with dough shaped like bones, sits among four candy skulls and a cup of hot chocolate. A family decorates sugar skulls with icing at a little table, a skull sits among candles and a pot of marigolds — the cempasúchil whose colour and scent are said to guide the spirits home — and two skeleton dancers, calacas, whirl under the flags. Monarch butterflies arrive in central Mexico each autumn around the same time, and one page circles a sugar skull with them.

La Catrina

The elegant skeleton lady in the huge flowered hat began as a print by the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada in the early 1900s, poking fun at people who pretended to be grander than they were, and has become the most famous face of the Day of the Dead. Here she wears roses, marigolds and feathers on her hat, a lace collar and a string of beads, and holds a painted fan. A second portrait shows a girl with her face painted as a sugar skull under a crown of flowers.

Sugar skulls for younger children

The five easy pages are big and simple: a sugar skull with heart-shaped eyes and one flower, a kawaii calavera with a marigold crown, a blank sugar skull outline to design yourself, a cat and a xoloitzcuintle dog — the hairless dog linked with the Day of the Dead — both painted like sugar skulls. The painted sugar skull pumpkin is a good one for Halloween week, too.

Skull coloring pages for adults

The ornate sugar skull is covered edge to edge — a lotus on the forehead, flower mandalas in both eye sockets, vines and filigree across the cheeks. The zentangle skull has a different pattern in every section, the mandala rings a calavera with marigolds, candles, small skulls and papel picado, the stained glass window builds a sugar skull from glass pieces among marigolds, and the pattern page packs a dozen skulls together with roses, hearts and candles. The skull with a crown of roses is a gentler step up from the easy pages to these.

Print the whole set at once

The button at the top of this page bundles all twenty into a single download, so you can print the lot for a class or a celebration rather than picking through them one at a time. Every page comes as a PDF in both US Letter and A4.

What to colour them with

Real sugar skulls are bright — pink, turquoise, orange, yellow and purple icing on white sugar — so felt tips suit the easy pages well. For the ornate and zentangle skulls, fine coloured pencils or gel pens keep the small shapes crisp.

More autumn pages

For the rest of the season see the October coloring pages, which have a Day of the Dead ofrenda, the Halloween coloring pages, the spider coloring pages and the fall coloring pages.