Prostokvashino coloring pages: 32+ free printable PDF designs from one of the most loved Soviet animated series, featuring the cat Matroskin, the dog Sharik, young Uncle Fyodor, Postman Pechkin, the cow Murka, and the full cast of the village of Prostokvashino. Every page can be downloaded as a PDF to print or colored online in the browser.
If you grew up in Russia or any of the post-Soviet countries, you already know exactly who these characters are. For everyone else: Prostokvashino started as a trilogy of short animated films made at Soyuzmultfilm studio between 1978 and 1984, based on Eduard Uspensky’s 1974 children’s book. The story is small on purpose. A serious-natured six-year-old boy, known as “Uncle Fyodor” because of his unusual grown-up manner, runs away from home after his parents refuse to let him keep a talking cat named Matroskin. Together with Matroskin and a stray dog called Sharik, he finds an abandoned house in the countryside village of Prostokvashino, and the three of them figure out how to live together. That is essentially the whole story, and it is more than enough.
There are 32 designs in this collection, drawn from both the original trilogy and the later animated series. They range from Matroskin sitting calmly with his guitar to chaotic group scenes with the whole village cast. Pages from the Prostokvashino series have a distinctive hand-drawn warmth to them that does not look like modern CGI animation, and that quality carries into how these coloring pages feel to work with.
Quick Answer
Prostokvashino coloring pages are a free set of 32+ printable PDFs and online coloring sheets from the classic Soviet animated series and its sequels, featuring Matroskin the cat, Sharik the dog, Uncle Fyodor, Postman Pechkin, Murka the cow, the jackdaw Galchonok, and scenes from the village of Prostokvashino.
Best for: fans of the original trilogy and series, children in Russian-speaking households, and anyone looking for a set with a quieter, warmer aesthetic than most modern cartoon pages
Formats: printable PDF and online coloring
Popular pages: Matroskin with Gavryusha, Sharik, and the group scenes with Uncle Fyodor
Creative uses: a village scene arrangement, a postcard to grandparents, a character personality quiz wall, and a seasonal winter scene series
What’s Inside Prostokvashino Coloring Pages
The set draws from multiple parts of the series and covers the main household, the village characters, and several animals.
Matroskin Pages
Matroskin has the most pages of any character in the set. He appears solo, with his guitar, with the calf Gavryusha, with Murka the cow, visiting Uncle Fyodor, and in several scenes with Sharik.
Coloring Matroskin: he is a grey-and-white striped cat, sometimes wearing a red scarf and felt boots. The stripes are the detail that makes him recognizable across pages, and keeping them consistently grey-on-white is what separates him from a generic cartoon cat. In the original Soyuzmultfilm animation style, his colors are soft and slightly muted, not the saturated primaries of later animation.
Sharik Pages
Sharik appears solo in several poses, with a bone, with his hunting rifle, with Matroskin, being saved by a beaver, and in the village landscape.
Coloring Sharik: he is a brown mongrel dog, warm-toned rather than reddish. His design in the 1978 films is deliberately unremarkable: he is meant to look like a regular stray, not a purebred animal, which means his coloring benefits from warmth and softness rather than any single defining shade.
Uncle Fyodor Pages
Uncle Fyodor appears with a sandwich, with sausages, with Matroskin, with the hare, and in several family scenes with his parents.
Coloring Uncle Fyodor: he has dark hair, wears simple Soviet-era children’s clothes, and carries the slightly serious expression that earned him the nickname in the first place. His clothing tends toward practical greens and blues, which suits the village setting.
Postman Pechkin Pages
Pechkin, the nosy and famously prickly village postman, has two pages: one solo portrait and one with the jackdaw Galchonok.
Coloring Pechkin: he is a middle-aged man in a hat and a postman’s uniform, with the slightly hunched posture the original animation gives him. His postal uniform is a greyish-blue, and keeping him in muted tones suits his grumpy personality better than bright colors.
Family, Village, and Animal Pages
This group includes Uncle Fyodor’s parents, Murka the cow and her calf Gavryusha, the jackdaw Galchonok, the beaver who saves Sharik from the river, and several scenes with two or more characters together.
Coloring the village pages: the landscape scenes in the original Prostokvashino films use a gentle, slightly faded palette, the kind of colors that feel like late summer in the Russian countryside. For the village background pages, muted greens and warm earth tones work better than vivid greens, and the sky tends toward a soft pale blue rather than a saturated one.
Printable PDF and Online Prostokvashino Coloring Pages
Every design in this set is available as a printable PDF or for coloring directly in the browser.
Using both formats: solo character pages like Matroskin and Sharik portraits work well for online sessions. The multi-character and landscape pages, where you can control the exact tones across a wider scene, reward printing and working with pencils or watercolors.
What These Pages Do
What makes Prostokvashino unusual as a coloring subject is that the whole franchise is built around domestic life, not adventure. The characters argue about who should wash the dishes, worry about the cow’s milk production, and write letters home that accidentally contain phrases like “my paws ache sometimes.” These are not scenes from a grand plot. They are scenes from a household, and every page in this set is a moment from a life that has stayed in the memory of several generations of children and adults.
The AAP notes that child-directed creative activities with open-ended choices, rather than fixed correct outcomes, support creative thinking and self-expression in ways structured tasks do not.
Art therapy practitioners recognize that familiar characters from culturally significant stories, particularly those connected to family memory across generations, bring a depth of emotional engagement to creative work that newer characters rarely match.
How to Color Prostokvashino Coloring Pages Well
The original films have a particular visual quality: hand-drawn lines, slightly textured backgrounds, and a palette that feels warm and a little weathered. That quality is worth trying to recreate rather than working against it.
For Matroskin, keep the stripes soft grey rather than charcoal. The original animation style used a mid-tone grey that reads as gentle, not stark. A very dark grey on Matroskin makes him look more dramatic than his character warrants. His red scarf, when it appears, is the one accent color that can be fully saturated.
For Sharik, stay warm. A cool grey-brown reads as a different kind of dog entirely. The warm, slightly golden brown of his fur is part of what makes him look friendly and slightly hapless, which is exactly what he is.
For village scenes, think late summer rather than spring. The greens in Prostokvashino are not bright, new-growth greens. They are the slightly tired, rich greens of August, and the fields have the warm golden tones of approaching autumn. That palette gives the pages their distinctively Russian countryside feeling.
For Pechkin and the adult characters, muted and slightly desaturated works best. The original films gave the human adults a flatter, less colorful look than the animals, which actually makes the animals feel like the emotional center of the story. Carrying that contrast into the coloring, keeping humans a little more muted and giving the animals slightly warmer tones, recreates that dynamic.
On the winter pages and snow scenes, resist pure white. Snow in the Prostokvashino visual style is never stark white. A very pale blue-grey with slightly warmer shadows gives it the soft, heavy quality of Russian winter rather than the crisp whiteness of a Christmas card.
5 Creative Craft Ideas with Prostokvashino Coloring Pages
Village Scene Arrangement
Color three or four landscape and character pages, cut out the characters, and arrange them against one of the village background pages to make a small scene.
A way to turn several pages into something that looks like a frame from the series. Takes about twenty minutes.
Postcard to a Grandparent
Color any Matroskin or Sharik page, fold a piece of card, glue the page to the front, and write a message in the style of the characters’ famous letter: “My paws ache sometimes, but I have so much warm milk.”
A nod to one of the most quoted letters in Russian children’s literature. Takes about ten minutes.
Character Personality Wall
Color one page each of Matroskin, Sharik, Uncle Fyodor, and Pechkin, then add a handwritten label under each describing their personality in one phrase.
A simple display that doubles as a reminder of who everyone is for people new to the series. Takes about fifteen minutes.
Winter Trilogy Series
Color three Prostokvashino pages, imagining them as scenes from three different seasons: one in warm autumn tones, one in the muted greys and blues of winter, one in the tentative greens of early spring.
A way to explore how the same characters and palette shift across the series’ different seasonal films. Takes about thirty minutes.
Murka and Gavryusha Portrait
Color the “Cow Murka” and “Matroskin with the calf Gavryusha” pages as a paired display, treating them as a mother-and-child portrait.
Two pages that together tell a small story without needing any context from the films. Takes about fifteen minutes.
FAQ About Prostokvashino Coloring Pages
Are these Prostokvashino coloring pages free, and can I color them online?
Yes. Every page is free, with no sign-in or payment required. Download the PDF to print at home, or color it directly on screen in the browser.
What is Prostokvashino?
Prostokvashino is a Soviet animated series from Soyuzmultfilm studio, based on Eduard Uspensky’s 1974 children’s book Uncle Fyodor, His Dog, and His Cat. The original trilogy consists of Three from Prostokvashino (1978), Vacation in Prostokvashino (1980), and Winter in Prostokvashino (1984), each running around 20 minutes. The series follows Uncle Fyodor, a self-reliant six-year-old, along with his talking cat Matroskin and stray dog Sharik, who set up a household together in an abandoned village house in the countryside. The series was revived as a new animated series in 2018, which ran through 2024.
Who are the main characters?
Matroskin is a grey-and-white striped cat, practical, slightly superior, and very particular about how the household is run. Sharik is a warm-brown mongrel dog, good-natured and rather more impulsive than Matroskin. Uncle Fyodor is the boy who brought them both together. Postman Pechkin is the nosy village postman who becomes one of the series’ most beloved supporting characters despite, or because of, his constant attempts to stick his nose into everyone’s business.
Why is the boy called Uncle Fyodor?
Because he is unusually serious and self-sufficient for his age, uncle in Russian is used as a form of address for adult men, and the other characters started calling him that as a joke that became a name. He is six years old in the original 1978 film.
What is the name written on the cat’s collar in some pages?
Matroskin. The name comes from the Russian word matros, meaning sailor, a reference to the striped pattern of his fur, which resembles a sailor’s striped shirt.
Is Prostokvashino available to watch outside Russia?
The original three Soyuzmultfilm films are available with English subtitles on various Soviet animation streaming platforms and YouTube channels. The 2018 revival series is primarily accessible on Russian streaming services.
Are these official Prostokvashino coloring pages?
No. These are fan-made coloring sheets for personal use and are not affiliated with, licensed by, or endorsed by Soyuzmultfilm or any other rights holder of the Prostokvashino series.
What age group is this set best suited for?
The simpler character portraits work well for children from about age four. Adults who grew up with the original trilogy will find something on nearly every page. The series’s long cultural history in Russia means this is one of the most intergenerational sets on the site, with parents and grandparents who remember the 1978 film and children who know the 2018 series are coloring from the same cast.
Start Coloring
Download any page by clicking the design. No account, email, or payment is required. Pages print directly from the browser at full resolution or open in the online coloring tool for screen use. Share finished pages on Facebook or Pinterest with the share buttons at the top of each design page.
