Say the word "dinosaur" near any child and watch their eyes ignite — no creature combines hugeness, mystery, and thrill like the giants of prehistory. And the dinosaur holds one advantage in drawing lessons that no other animal has: nobody has ever seen a real one! So there is no "wrong" drawing whatever your child does — purple? Possible. Blue dots? Maybe they really were! That total freedom makes today the most liberated lesson in the series. We'll draw the friendly long-necked giant (the gentle brachiosaurus), then convert it with small tweaks into other species, and build the volcano world it lived in.
We need a big horizontal sheet — giants need space — a pencil, greens and oranges, and any bold color the artist chooses.
Steps for the Friendly Giant
- 1) Draw a huge horizontal oval in the middle of the page, slightly tilted — the body. Make it the biggest shape your child has drawn in the whole series; we're drawing a true giant!
- 2) The legendary neck: from the body's upper front, draw two parallel arcs climbing in a gentle curve toward the top of the page — like a giant slide children could climb. Let the neck narrow slightly as it rises.
- 3) The head: a very small oval at the neck's end — and here lies the entire secret of "giantness": the smaller the head compared to the body, the bigger the dinosaur feels! A dot eye and a small arc smile.
- 4) The tail: from the body's rear, draw two arcs stretching out to meet at a distant point — a long tail tapering just like the neck, balancing the shape like a seesaw.
- 5) The legs: four huge rectangles with rounded ends — bridge pillars, not cat legs — with small arc toenails at each foot's front.
- 6) The back spikes — the final signature: a row of small triangles running from the top of the head along the neck and back to the tail's tip, growing in the middle and shrinking at both ends.
- 7) Skin touches: small circles and ovals scattered on the body — dinosaur spots, with total freedom of shape and color.
The Dinosaur Factory: A New Species with Every Tweak
Now the part that turns one lesson into five — the same oval body with small changes:
- Shorten the neck, enlarge the head, open a mouth with small triangle teeth, and shrink the front arms into two comically short ones — you've got the famous T-Rex, king of dinosaurs!
- Keep the body and add a big half-circle sail on the back, striped with vertical lines — the river spinosaurus.
- Three horns on the head — a short one on the nose, two long ones above the eyes — plus a half-circle frill behind the head like a royal collar: the armored triceratops.
- Two wide wings instead of front legs and a long pointed beak: the pterodactyl soaring above everyone.
Today's loveliest discovery: your child is no longer learning a drawing but a recipe they can cook anything from.
Building the Prehistoric World
- The volcano: a big flat-topped triangle in the background, a zigzag gray smoke cloud above its mouth, and orange lava lines flowing down its side — the most famous backdrop in dinosaur-drawing history, and no child ever tires of it.
- Giant plants: ferns as curved lines fanning from a single point like a green fountain, and trees with tall trunks and a ball of leaves on top.
- A hatching egg: a big white oval with a zigzag crack across its middle and a tiny dinosaur head peeking out — the detail that makes children laugh hardest and drops a story straight into the scene.
Free Coloring and the Naming Game
Today's coloring rule is "no rules": green with orange spikes, purple with yellow dots, blue with rainbow stripes — every choice is perfectly scientific in a world nobody ever saw! Then add the game that makes this lesson unforgettable: every new dinosaur your child invents needs a scientific name of their own making. Teach them the recipe: a word describing the look + "saurus" at the end — drew a pink dotted dinosaur? It's the "Dottysaurus Pinkus"! Long ears? "The Great Earsaurus"! This little language game doubles the drawing fun and opens a bottomless appetite for inventing new species — and your child is now, officially, both a paleontologist and their own illustrator.
Imagination Questions: The After-Drawing Fuel
The dinosaur is an imagination gate that never closes. Once the scene is complete, try these three questions and watch what happens: "if you had a pet dinosaur the size of a cat — what would you feed it and where would it sleep?", "your dinosaur: a plant-eater that munches trees, or does it prefer biscuits?", "what's inside the volcano in your drawing?" Every question may open a whole new drawing — and that's exactly how artists work: one drawing asks a question, another answers.
The Bottom Line
A huge oval, a slide of a neck, a tiny head, and triangle spikes — the result is a friendly giant filling both the page and the heart. Today your child learned the series' two greatest lessons: a small head makes a giant body (proportions create feeling), and one recipe births an entire family of species. Wider worlds of creatures and characters await their imagination in the Rasm Kids course — video lessons that turn every recipe into an adventure.
