Does your child love drawing but not know where to start? The Art subject has two drawing sections. Learn to draw goes from an apple and an ice cream all the way to a T. rex, with each lesson split into small strokes for your child to follow. Advanced drawing is for older children: 3D shapes, light and shade, perspective, and the human figure. Both come built into the app, with no connection and no account needed.

Learn to draw

How your child gets in

On your child's home screen, tap the Art subject, then the Learn to draw tile. There is no parental gate.

Choose a lesson and how much help

At the top of the screen are three buttons: Trace (your child draws over faint lines that are already there), Follow dots (your child joins the dots) and On my own (your child looks at the example and draws it themselves). The app remembers this setting separately for each child. A child who is just starting should begin with Trace, then move on to the other two as their hand gets surer.

Below is a grid of lessons grouped from Level 1 to Level 6, 52 lessons in all. Each card shows the finished, coloured-in picture, with three stars. No lesson is locked; the card labelled Up next is the one to do next.

How a lesson goes

  1. Let's try!: a short game about what the lesson teaches, such as fitting shapes together, picking a shape, putting things in front or behind, or making things bigger and smaller. There is no wrong answer here; if your child stays still for a while, the Dino's hand points to the right place, and then the app does it for them. Once the lesson has 3 stars, there is a Skip button.
  2. A Did you know? card: one short sentence about shapes or colours, read aloud by the app.
  3. Drawing step by step: the app reads out the instruction, such as Draw a circle, a demo hand draws it first, and then it's your child's turn. When the drawing is right, the shape fills with colour and the lesson moves on to the next step. If the drawing keeps going off, the app draws that step for them and carries on, so your child never gets stuck. The toolbar has Show me, Erase and Listen again.
  4. At the end, the app says You did it!, gives stars and recaps with Today you learned: …. Your child then chooses Next picture, Draw again or Pick another.

Stars: 3 stars if no step needed help, 2 stars if a little help was needed, and 1 star otherwise. On On my own, your child always gets 3 stars. There are never 0 stars.

Advanced drawing

In the Art subject, right after Learn to draw, is the Advanced drawing tile. The first time in, the app says This part is for big kids. Want to try? Go ahead and draw! and then lets your child in as usual; this section isn't locked for anyone.

  • 32 lessons over four levels, from Level 7 to Level 10: 3D shapes; light and shade; perspective; the human figure and composition. Level 8 starts with an Ages 12+ label and Level 10 with an Ages 14+ label, as a suggestion only.
  • The same three settings, Trace, Follow dots and On my own, remembered separately from Learn to draw.
  • A lesson goes Let's try! → a Did you know? card with an illustration → drawing step by step. From Level 8 there is a bar with four stages, Layout · Construct · Light & shade · Finish, and three pencils of different darkness. Show guide lines turns on the helper lines, and Voice off is for children who would rather draw in quiet.
  • On an iPhone held upright, the app may suggest turning the phone sideways for more room to draw.
  • At the end, your child's drawing is placed next to the Artist's version to compare; tap Save to my art room to keep it. The drawing goes into My art room.

Free drawing: a bigger sheet and Big paper

In Free drawing, the sheet of paper is now about ten screens wide. Pinch or spread two fingers to zoom out and in; drag with two fingers to move to another part of the paper. The Fit screen button zooms back out to show the whole sheet.

The Big paper button tucks away all the toolbars so the paper fills the whole screen. All that is left is one round button in the top left corner, showing the pencil and the colour in use. Tap it to bring back the pencils and the palette; once your child has chosen, they tuck themselves away again. To go back to normal, tap Exit big paper.

Good to know

  • The 52 Learn to draw lessons and 32 Advanced drawing lessons come built into the app, with no connection needed. The voice for each step downloads from our server the first time, so the first listen needs a connection.
  • Stars and help settings in Learn to draw and Advanced drawing stay on this device only: they don't sync to other devices and don't appear in the Learning report.
  • Learn to draw lessons don't earn Playtime tickets and aren't saved to My art room automatically. Advanced drawing pictures only go into My art room when your child taps Save to my art room.

If a drawing step is too hard for your child, please write to us at dinokids@digidinos.com.