How to draw ·
How to draw a dinosaur with kids: trace a T. rex with your phone
Every kid wants to draw a T. rex, and most step-by-step tutorials end in tears: the head comes out wrong, the legs don't match, the tail is an afterthought. There's a much older trick that skips all of that — tracing — and a phone makes it work without a light box.
You put the paper on the table, rest the phone a few inches above it, and the picture appears on screen floating over the page. The child draws what they see. Ten minutes later there's a real T. rex on real paper, drawn by their own hand.
Get the picture on the phone
Open DoodlePlot, go to the Dinosaurs pack, pick T-Rex and choose Trace. (The Dinosaurs pack is part of DoodlePlot Pro; if you'd rather not, save the picture above to your photos, tap Draw your photo on the home screen and choose it — it goes over the camera the same way.)
Prop the phone over the paper
Lay a sheet of paper on the table. Turn two mugs upside down about a hand-width apart and rest the phone across them, screen up, camera pointing down at the paper. A stack of books or a phone stand works too.
Tip: Room light is enough. Keep lamps to the side so the phone's shadow doesn't fall on the page.
Fit the picture to the page
On screen you'll see the paper with the T. rex over it. Pinch to make it bigger or smaller, drag it into the middle of the page, then tap Lock so a stray finger can't move it. If the lines look faint, slide Image strength up.
Trace the big shapes first
Draw the round tummy and the head first, then the tail, then the legs. Leave the small things — teeth, claws, the spots and the spikes down the back — for last, once the outline is there.
Tip: Look at the screen, not the pencil. The camera shows the pencil tip under the picture, so the hand knows where to go.
Lift the phone and finish
Take the phone away and look at the drawing on its own. Go over the lines you like with a darker pencil or a marker, and color it in — green with orange spots is the classic, but nobody actually knows what color a T. rex was.
Keep it
Tap Save to Gallery. DoodlePlot photographs the paper drawing through the camera and keeps it in the gallery next to everything else they've made.
Why tracing is the right way to start
Tracing gets the shapes into the hand before the eye can judge them. After tracing the same T. rex two or three times, most children can draw a passable one freehand — the proportions are simply familiar. That's how artists have always learned: copying, light boxes, grids. Freehand is the goal, not the starting point.
Make it harder as they improve
- Turn Image strength down a little each time so they draw more from memory.
- Trace the body and head, then hide the picture and finish the legs and tail freehand.
- Move on to the other dinosaurs in the pack — Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Brontosaurus — the body shapes are all different.
Questions parents ask
- What age can kids draw a dinosaur?
- By tracing, from about age 4 — as soon as they can hold a pencil and follow a line. Drawing one freehand from a step-by-step guide usually takes until 7 or 8; tracing first gets them there sooner.
- Isn't tracing cheating?
- No. Tracing trains hand control and proportion, which are exactly the skills freehand drawing needs. The trick is to treat it as practice: trace a few times, then try without.
Trace it with DoodlePlot
Prop your phone over paper and trace this picture through the screen. Free to download, ad-free, no account.