Online Coloring Guide

This is a complete walkthrough of the SketchJoy online coloring app. Here, you will know the different sections and tools available in the applications.

A quick tour of the screen

The app keeps three groups of controls around the canvas so you can find any feature at a glance.

Picking a coloring page

You can find the online coloring pages in the online coloring hub. You can explore inside the categories or choose one of the trending or recently published pages. Then just click each one to start coloring right in your browser.

When you are inside the app, you do not need to return to the hub page to pick another page; just tap Browse in the top bar to open the picker. The home view shows three things stacked top to bottom.

1. Recent pages: the last pages you opened, so you can jump right back in.
2. Top categories: the most popular themes with a few sample pages each.
3. All categories: every theme on the site, sorted in a tidy grid.

Use the search box at the top to look up anything by name. The search now matches titles, descriptions, and the keywords tagged on each page, so a query like dragon scales will find pages tagged with either word.

The filter button (the slider icon) lets you narrow results by:

• Gender: Boy, Girl, or both.
• Difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, or Expert.
• Age range: 3–5, 6–8, 9–12, or 13+.

Tap a card to load it onto the canvas. Tap a category name to see the full collection with infinite scroll.

A snapshot of the browse panel makes it easy to explore and search coloring pages.

Meet the six tools

Every painting action uses one of these six tools. They live in the toolbar and stay one tap away.

1. Bucket

The headline tool. Tap any region and the whole shape fills with the active color (or gradient). This is the fastest way to color a page from start to finish.

2. Brush

A smooth, round brush for free strokes. Great for shading cheeks, adding fur texture, or filling tricky little gaps the bucket misses.

3. Pencil

A thinner, harder-edged stroke. Use it for line details, eye highlights, or small patterns inside larger filled areas.

4. Spray

A scatter-style airbrush for soft texture. Stack short bursts to build clouds, sand, freckles, or a glow around a character.

5. Pastel

A chunky chalk-style stroke with a soft edge. Perfect for grainy backgrounds, soft skies, or that hand-drawn paper look.

6. Eraser

Wipes any fill or brush stroke back to white. Tap a filled region to clear just that region, or drag across brush strokes to scrub them away.

The “Lines Close” toggle

Look for the small square icon near the brush size area (the BoxSelect icon). It controls how the Brush, Pencil, Spray, and Pastel behave when you stroke across the page.

• Lines Close (active ): Strokes are clipped inside the region you start in. You can scribble freely and the color stays neatly inside the lines, like a real coloring book where nothing leaks across the outline.
• Lines Open (off ): Strokes flow across the whole page with no boundaries. Use this for backgrounds, halos, and effects that span multiple shapes.

Choosing colors

Tap the palette pill in the color bar to open the palette picker. SketchJoy ships with more than 25 palettes grouped by theme:

• Every day: Basic, Skin Tones, Eyes, Lips, Hair, Make Up.
• Nature: Sky, Beach, Underwater, Forest, Desert, Flowers, Fallen Leaves.
• Mood: Mystical, Sunset, Sweet, Lively, Memories, Cottage, Vintage Pop.
• Themes: Rainbow, Pastel Rainbow, Street Party, Rubber Sky, Miami Beach, Fourth of July, Halloween.

Tap any swatch in the bar to make it your active color. The big circle near the slider always shows what is loaded and ready to paint.

Tweak the shade with the lightness slider

The slider next to the active color (horizontal on phones, vertical on desktops) shifts the swatch you picked from very dark to very light. Pull it once, and you have hundreds of shades from a single starting color. Skin tones, sky gradients, and mood lighting all live in this slider.

The color bar with the lighness slider in the portrait view of iPad Air

Paint with gradients

Some palettes are radial gradient sets instead of solid swatches. When you pick one, every fill becomes a soft inner-to-outer color blend that follows the shape of the region. Bubbles, planets, gemstones, and glowing eyes all look great with one tap.

The eyedropper

Tap the pipette icon to grab a color you have already used.

• On desktop: click any spot on the canvas to copy that color into your active swatch.
• On touch screens: drag the floating crosshair over the area you want, then tap Pick Color to confirm or Cancel to back out. The ring around the crosshair previews the color before you commit.

This is the fastest way to keep a long project consistent. Match the same red across a hundred poppies without re-picking from the palette every time.

Undo, Redo, and Reset

Three small buttons sit together near the brush controls.

• Undo : rolls back your last action.
• Redo : brings it back if you change your mind.
• Reset Colors : clears every fill and brush stroke and returns the page to plain line art. A confirm popup keeps you safe from accidental taps.

Your work is saved per page in your browser, so leaving and coming back will keep your progress.

Fullscreen mode

Tap the expand icon (or pick Fullscreen from the menu) to hide every bar and stretch the canvas across the screen. Hand the device to a kid, take a clean screenshot, or just enjoy the artwork without distractions. Tap the icon again to bring the controls back.

Moving around the canvas

Every page sits on a canvas you can move, zoom, and rotate to reach the spot you want to color. The controls work the same on every device, just with different gestures.

On a desktop (mouse or trackpad)

• Zoom: scroll the mouse wheel up to zoom in, down to zoom out. The zoom centers on the spot under your cursor, so you can dial in on a tiny eye or a single petal without losing your place.
• Pan: click and hold on the empty area around the page (not on the artwork itself) and drag. The cursor turns into a grab hand while you move.
• Color: click the artwork directly. The bucket, brush, and other tools only react to clicks on the page, so you can grab the background to pan without painting by accident.

On a phone or tablet (touch)

• Zoom: pinch two fingers apart to zoom in, pinch them together to zoom out. The zoom anchors to the midpoint between your fingers.
• Pan: drag with two fingers to slide the page in any direction.
• One-finger drag on the artwork paints with the active tool.
• One-finger drag on the empty area pans the page (handy when you’re zoomed in close).
• Switching to two fingers while painting cancels the stroke instantly, so a pinch never leaves a stray line.

Rotating the page

Rotation is a touch-only gesture, built into the same two-finger pinch. Twist two fingers on the canvas to spin the page. This is great for shading at a comfortable wrist angle, or coloring a sideways character without tilting the device.

Zoom range

You can shrink the page down to 10% to see the whole composition at a glance, or push it up to 20× to color a single pixel-sized detail. The position, zoom, and rotation reset whenever you load a new page, so every page starts centered and upright.

Saving and sharing your finished art

The Download button (top bar on desktop, inside the menu on phones) opens a small dialog with three formats:

• PNG — best for sharing on social media, lossless.
• JPG — smaller file size, great for messages and email.
• PDF — letter-sized, ready to print and stick on the fridge.

The small download dialog with three formats

The Share button generates a private link to your colored page that you can post or text to family. Anyone with the link sees a clean, full-size preview of your art.

The share dialog with a unique URL

The menu also has a Print option that opens the system print dialog for a quick paper copy of the original line art. Fold it into a notebook, hand it to a friend, or color the same page on paper and on screen.

The bonus menu

The menu button in the top right hides a stack of helpful extras.

Tips for great-looking pages

A few small habits will lift any coloring project.

• Block in big shapes first with the bucket, then layer brush and pastel for shading.
• Use the lightness slider to add depth. Fill the base shape, lighten the slider one notch, and brush a highlight on the top side.
• Try a gradient palette on round objects (eyes, moons, baubles, scales) for an instant pro look.
• Keep “Lines Close” on while you shade so your strokes never bleed into neighbors.
• Switch to “Lines Open” for one stroke when you want a halo, sun ray, or smoke trail across multiple regions.
• Pick from the page with the eyedropper to keep matching shades consistent across a whole illustration.

Works on every screen

SketchJoy adapts to the device you have on hand.

• Desktop / large tablet (landscape): Tools sit in a left rail, palette and slider on the right rail, and the canvas fills the middle.
• Phone / portrait tablet: Tools sit on top of a bottom panel that holds the slider, swatches, and action buttons. Everything stays one thumb away.

Touch, mouse, and stylus all work. Pinch to zoom. Two-finger drag to pan. Tap to paint. No download or sign-in needed.

Start coloring

Open the Browse popup, pick a page, and try the bucket on the biggest shape. From there, every other tool is one tap away. Have fun.