Ornate Morning Glory Coloring Page

Ornate Morning Glory Coloring Page transforms the morning glory into a richly decorative design element — an ornamental interpretation that draws as much from the traditions of Victorian wallpaper, Art Nouveau pattern and illuminated manuscript as from botanical illustration. Part of our free flower coloring pages collection, this page rewards bold, jewel-toned color with spectacular results.

The morning glory is named for its daily cycle: each flower opens wide in the morning sunshine, then closes and withers by afternoon — living for only a single day. This transience has made it a symbol of ephemeral beauty and fleeting love in Japan, where it is called asagao ("morning face") and has been a beloved garden flower since the 9th century, originally introduced from China as a medicinal plant. The Aztecs used morning glory seeds in religious rituals — the seeds contain ergine (d-lysergic acid amide), a psychoactive compound related to LSD, and were used by priests to communicate with gods. The extraordinary vivid blue of the Japanese Ipomoea nil — an almost impossibly saturated pure blue rare in nature — has inspired Japanese poets, painters and gardeners for over a millennium.

The morning glory's funnel-shaped flower is a beautiful geometric form — a perfect five-pointed star when fully open, the five petals fused into a single smooth trumpet. The most striking coloring feature is the bold color contrast between the vivid colored "limb" (the flat, star-shaped outer face) and the white or pale "throat" (the inner tube leading to the nectaries). For blue morning glories, use pure ultramarine or cerulean at the outer edge, blending to a soft lavender-purple at the star points, then transitioning through pale blue to pure white at the throat. The radiating structure makes it ideal for coloring working outward from the white center.

Ornate floral designs invite the richest, most ambitious color treatments: jewel tones that would overwhelm a simple botanical illustration work magnificently in a decorative context. Deep sapphire blue, emerald, ruby and amethyst all suit an ornate morning glory treatment. Gold gel pen or metallic pencil used on the decorative border details and accent elements adds a gilded quality that transforms a coloring page into something approaching an illuminated manuscript. Consider the entire page as a unified decorative object rather than a botanical subject; the morning glory is the motif through which a broader aesthetic vision is expressed. This ornate coloring page is completely free to download as a print-ready PDF. A completed page, framed and mounted, makes genuinely beautiful decorative art. Free, always.