How to Draw a T-Rex Dinosaur – Step by Step

Alright, so a T-Rex is not an animal that still exists.  But it’s still an animal that has lived, so that counts.  Besides, who doesn’t want a T-Rex in their sketchbook?  In this drawing tutorial, we’ll take a look at how to draw a T-Rex dinosaur.  We’ll break the drawing process down into an easy step by step approach.

Step 1 – Draw a Couple of Loose Shapes and a Line

It’s going to be important to be a little loose in the beginning stages of the drawing. This means that we can draw with several, loose lines. We can define the details once we have the basic shapes in place.

We first need to establish the space that the dinosaur is going to fill on the picture plane.  A couple of ovals will do here – one drawn for the head and another larger one drawn for the body.  A line is also drawn from the shape of the head through the body and on to the end of the tail. We’ll allow the line drawn for the tail to curve slightly at the end. This will help to create the illusion of space as the tail will appear as though it goes away from the viewer a little.

 

 

Step 2 – Draw a Stick Figure

Next, we’ll build up the structure of the beast using lines.  We’re simply drawing a fancy stick figure here.  Lines are drawn for the bones in the arms and legs.  Shapes are used for the “hands” and the feet.  We’ll also draw a line under the tail to finish off the shape. Notice that we didn’t draw a shape or lines for the lower portions of the legs. We’ll do that in the next step.

 

 

Step 3 – Thicken up the Body of the T-Rex

Now we can use the stick figure that we drew in the last step to thicken up the form of the T-Rex.  A few details are also added to the face in this step. These details include a few lines for the mouth and the eyes.

The oval that was drawn in the first step can used as a guide for where to place each of the features.  We can also draw a few lines for the beginnings of some claws on both the “hands” and feet.

 

 

Step 4 – Add Details and Make Things Angular

Simple geometric shapes are great for laying out the drawing, but to really make the drawing look realistic, we’ll need to make some of those shapes more organic.  We’ll need to do this all around the form of the T-Rex, but especially on the head.  Notice the bumps that we’ve added. This makes the outer lines appear more natural. We’ll also add some details in this step like a bit of texture on the skin and some pointed teeth in the mouth.  We’ll also finish off the claws on the feet.

 

 

Step 5 – Finish the Drawing

Enough of our sketch is complete to finish the drawing.  We can go over lines with a dark medium to make the contrast stronger and thicken up the line in areas to create the illusion of form.

A bit of cast shadow under the T-Rex definitely helps. A bit more texture and some broken cross contour lines add to the realism and help to define the illusion of form.

 

Here are the steps we used to draw the T-Rex in one image…