Art Deco Coloring Pages
Welcome to my Art Deco coloring pages section.
Art Deco gets its name from a huge design fair held in Paris in 1925, and it was the shiny, speedy style of the Roaring Twenties and the 1930s. After years of swooping Art Nouveau vines, designers wanted straight lines, zigzags, sunbursts and stepped shapes that looked like skyscrapers, machines and ocean liners.
Jump to: Ocean Liners | Roaring Twenties | Animals | Patterns and Windows | About Art Deco
Ocean Liners
Before passenger planes, an ocean liner was the fastest way to cross the Atlantic, and the grandest ones were decorated like floating Art Deco hotels. The French liner Normandie, which first sailed in 1935, had a dining room longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The sunburst behind this ship and the stepped border around it are two of the style's favourite shapes.
The Roaring Twenties
The 1920s were so full of jazz, dancing and new inventions that people called them the Roaring Twenties. Young women known as flappers cut their hair into short bobs, wore long strings of beads and pulled on bell-shaped cloche hats (cloche is the French word for "bell"). Their look fits the style perfectly, simple and sleek, with the fan shapes behind her echoing the hat.
Art Deco Animals
Art Deco artists loved animals drawn as smooth, simple shapes. Each of these was picked because it fits the style in a different way.
Puma
Speed was the big idea of the 1920s and 30s, with faster trains, cars and planes, so designers loved sleek animals that looked like they were already moving. Leaping cats even decorated the hoods of some cars. The stepped mountains under this puma repeat the zigzag shapes you'd see on a skyscraper.
Swans
Swans turned up on glassware, jewellery and statues because their long curved necks look so graceful next to all those straight lines. When two swans face each other, their necks make a heart, which is why they're a symbol of love.
Flamingo
Miami Beach built hundreds of Art Deco hotels and apartment buildings in the 1930s, and flamingos became a symbol of the sunny seaside city. The long lines of the water and the rays of the sun behind this one are classic Art Deco shapes.
Peacock
A peacock's tail is already a fan, and fans were everywhere in Art Deco, from theatre decorations to jewellery. Here every feather has been simplified into a tidy eye shape, and the bird stands on steps like the stepped towers of a skyscraper.
Patterns and Windows
Art Deco loved shapes that repeat, like scallop shells, fans and arches that look like rolling waves. Designers used them on floors, wallpaper, elevator doors and windows, so a whole building could be covered in one pattern.
About Art Deco
Some of the stepped shapes in Art Deco came from ancient Egypt and Mexico. When King Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922, Egyptian ideas showed up on everything from jewellery to movie theatres.
You can still see the style on buildings. The top of the Chrysler Building in New York, finished in 1930, is a shiny steel sunburst of arches. The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro is Art Deco too.