Smiling girl in a beanie playing guitar amid swirling music notes and sound waves

Smiling Guitar Player in a Swirl of Music Notes

A beanie-wearing guitarist grins mid-strum as giant notes, curving staff lines, and sound waves whirl around her boots.

🎨 How to color it

Color the guitarist’s beanie cranberry red, her patterned jacket teal and peach, the acoustic guitar honey brown, and the floating music notes deep indigo. Use sharp colored pencils for the jacket’s little squiggle shapes, boot laces, guitar strings, and the many narrow staff lines so the details stay crisp. Try making the sound-wave arcs fade from yellow near the guitar to orange at the edges, as if her song is glowing outward.

The story behind this coloring page

The Chord Thief Game — Under the mural tunnel, Hazel taped three bottle caps to her guitar strap and declared her new game ready. Read the full story →

Under the mural tunnel, Hazel taped three bottle caps to her guitar strap and declared her new game ready. Each time a bus whooshed overhead with a dragon-belly rumble, she had to build a brand-new chord before the sound faded. Plink, strum, squeak—she twisted her fingers until the strings buzzed like bees in a paper cup. “Ha! I made that one,” she told the pigeons, who answered with important waddles through popcorn crumbs.

The game grew trickier when the tunnel began giving back sounds: sneaker squeals, a skateboard clack, the drip-drip from a rusty pipe. Hazel stitched each noise into her song, proud of every lopsided chord. Then a painted music note on the wall seemed to wink, and another appeared where plain brick had been. The tunnel was playing too, using echoes as its fingers.

Hazel laughed so hard she missed a chord, then made the miss into the chorus. By the time the next bus thundered over, her handmade game and the tunnel’s echo-game fit together like zipper teeth. If you spot the biggest note swirling near her guitar, don’t tell anyone—it may be stealing the next chord before the dragon-belly rumble fades.