Q&A for How to Draw Dinosaurs

Yes! Circles and triangles are the foundation for the composition of many different illustrations. For example, the use of triangles and circles was very popular during the Renaissance.

Subject, color, composition, contrast and creativity or unique vision are all important elements in creating art. But if you want to focus on one thing, it's your composition. Besides a common rule of thirds, study art for other ways to compose the image.

Once you've colored in your drawing, take out a Tombow mono eraser and use different strokes to create special textures or effects that add realism or creativity to your illustration.

Usually, you can't erase colored pencils completely, especially when the line or shading is very strong. However, a Tombow mono eraser is a great tool to use for quick fixes and touch-ups. It gets deep into the surface, which is awesome when you need to erase highly saturated or dark colors. It's also great because it's so small, which helps when you need a lot of precision to touch up tiny areas like the eyes in your drawing. If you are going to erase anything you've made with colored pencils, avoid using lots of pressure because it alters the paper's surface. If your paper is low quality and very thin, you might rip or warp it.

You can make your dinosaur look cute by giving it baby-like features. Think big eyes, a big head, and a small body. To give it a cutesy, cartoony look, give it rounded features, a smiling face, and fun patterns on its body, like spots or even hearts.

Sauropods, like the Apatosaurus, are some of the easiest dinosaurs to draw. Make a sideways oval shape for the body, then draw four thick, short legs, similar to the way you’d draw the legs on an elephant. Add a long tail and a long neck with a small head.

It may help to start the way scientific illustrators do: by looking at a dinosaur skeleton. Try sketching the skeleton or even tracing it to get the proportions of the dinosaur right. Flesh out the shape of the dinosaur around the skeleton, then add realistic features like scales and feathers. Look at other illustrations of dinosaurs, as well as pictures of their modern relatives (such as birds and reptiles), for ideas about how to do the details.

Feathers require a lot of tone and textures which is harder for beginners.

Drawing a dinosaur is probably hard because you haven't yet had a whole lot of practice. The more you work at it, the easier it will be. Try drawing one, then another. Soon, you'll be a dinosaur drawing pro!

This is because the proportions of the animal vary greatly. The arms are tiny, while the tail is massive, making it hard to balance out well if you're new to drawing.

First, look at the significant details of the Indoraptor. Ask yourself, What parts are part raptor, and what parts are part T-Rex. If you look at the details, you can draw anything you want in your respective style, and it will still be recognizable.

Look up references on the ankylosaurus and/or look up specific tutorials. It will help to research the known anatomy of the dinosaur, to have a broader understanding of how it moves.

Dromaeosaurs are known now to have lips, as most theropods (theropodamorphs) do. If you have mastered the techniques shown above to draw a ''raptor'', velociraptors have feathers and ''depressed'' snouts, so add these to your raptor and you are ready with the ''snarl''! When velociraptors supposedly snarl, their back lips would curve up/down, so do that in both the upper and lower lip. Then, draw a line connecting the ''pits'', where the velociraptor is shown baring its teeth, a bit of its gum is shown. Draw the teeth with enamel on the back and front, add scales to the ''wavy lips'' and you are done!

There are lots of dinosaurs, so the article would have to be pretty massive to include every single one. If you want to draw a sauropod, try first looking up a reference picture. A quick online search for Sauropod should bring up several helpful images. Next, use the steps in this article for drawing other dinosaurs---such as breaking them into simple shapes---to draw the sauropod in your reference.

Look up a picture of an indoraptor from the movie and try breaking it down into shapes. The body could be a fat oval, the arms could be comprised of thin ovals, and the head could be a rectangle, for example. Then, refine those shapes so that it looks more like your reference. Then, color it dark grey.

Try drawing an oval body with a triangle snout. You could use small ovals for the legs and add rectangles for the feet. The tail could be two long curvy lines that taper down to a point.

A sauropod has a long, slightly curved neck and a long, straight tail. The head is an oval and the legs are shorter. You can thicken the neck and the base of the tail, but the tip of some tails end in a thin whip.