March 10th, 2022

Today, in the studio, we offered the same provocation as yesterday: tracing huge fearsome dinosaurs! We chose this drawing medium for two reasons. First, the children were so excited about tracing this technique when we presented it earlier in the year, but also so we can capture the scale and size of dinosaurs. Today some children tried the dinosaur tracing for the very first time, while others shared their experiences from the day before.

Rawls looked at the computer screen to choose a dinosaur scene to trace: Whoa, look at all the dinosaurs. 
Isabelle: This one is for Ellie (pointing to her tracing of Ellie’s dinosaur from home). 
Rawls: This one is for me. 
Isabelle pressed her sharpie onto the paper on the easel: I do it so hard.
Rawls: I'm not finished yet. I going to draw a head.
Isabelle: Look at that small doggie (pointing to a cluster of marks that she made at the top of the page. 
Rawls: I draw a mouse runner. You got his eyes and his feet and his feet (pointing to different parts of his tracing). 
Rawls and Isabelle went to “Dino-world” to bring back the actual figurines that they were drawing. 
Rawls: Isabelle is drawing her dinosaur and I am drawing this one 

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Above: Ramsey deliberates which dinosaur scene to recreate while Emma explores how her body changes how the dinosaur is displayed on the plexiglass screen. 

Karen: Do you remember what it means when we say trace?
Ragnar: You draw the lines.
Ramsey: It has a long neck. I want to long-necked dinosaur because it has a long neck. It has a long, long. 

Charlton: You have to draw on the line. 
Charlton looked through the dinosaur scenes on the laptop: There’s alot of them. I want one with a T-rex, just two (dinosaurs). 
Charlton continued tracing : I got his head. 
Charlton pointed to each of the three dinosaurs  in his chosen scene, touching each one as he recited “rock, paper, scissors, rock, paper, scissors.”
Karen: Do you play rock, paper, scissors with someone at home? 
Charlton: I have a brother. His name is Cannon.

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Below: Charlton settles on an image of three dinosaurs in a circle, which features one of his favorite T-Rex toys. He then explores the process of drawing with sharpie and eventually traces the T-rex's tail. 

Ellie: I made a one, you have to hang (it up). Hang it up there (pointing to the window).  (To Emma) You doing so good with dinosaurs!
Emma: I draw with all lines.
Ellie:  I write emma’s name. I write Ellie, see says Ellie. 
Emma: Good
Ellie: We need Charlton’s dinosaur.
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As Ellie and Emma finished working on their bronotosaurus, Charlton walked back into the studio with his giant T-Rex toy. Ellie noticed, and insisted that we have Charlton's dinosaur for tracing. Using a Elena's phone camera, Ford quickly snapped a couple pictures of the T-Rex. 

Ford's pictures of the T-Rex

We were able to airdrop Ford's photos to the computer and observed how the dino looked on the screen. 

Ellie: Charlton look, draw your dinosaur!
Charlton: What is it stomping on?


Ellie made sure to give the T-Rex's teeth and eyes the most attention as the toy's red mouth fascinated her. 

Below: Louisa traces the outline of her beloved dino resulting in the drawing in the third picture. 

Ellie: Those are horns. 
Louisa: No, those are not horns. Those are spikes, it’s a part of the dinosaur.

We love how joyful our dinosaur work has been this week, and we're very excited to add a  digital dimension to our giant drawings!