Pixel Art Maker – Free Online Pixel Drawing Tool
This free pixel art maker lets you draw pixel art square by square, right in your browser. Pick a grid from 8 × 8 to 128 × 128, draw with pencil, fill, line, and mirror tools, choose a retro palette like PICO-8 or Game Boy green, and download a crisp PNG in up to 32 times the size without any blur. You can also print your pixel drawing as a color by number grid or as empty grid paper. There is no account, no watermark, and your drawing is saved in your browser.
How to Use the Pixel Art Maker
The canvas opens with a small heart so you can see how everything works. Clear it or draw right over it.
- Choose the grid size. Under Canvas, pick 8 × 8, 16 × 16, 24 × 24, 32 × 32, 48 × 48, 64 × 64, 96 × 96, or 128 × 128. Choose Custom for a rectangle, for example 32 × 16 for a banner or 48 × 64 for a character. Width and height can each be any whole number from 8 to 128.
- Pick a palette and a color. Click a color in the palette, or open the color field next to Color to mix any shade you like. “Add to my colors” saves it in your own palette.
- Draw. The pencil fills one pixel at a time. Drag to draw a line of pixels. Use the eraser to make pixels transparent again.
- Use the helpers. The fill tool floods an area with one color, the line and rectangle tools draw straight shapes, and mirror drawing copies every pixel to the other side.
- Undo freely. Ctrl+Z goes back up to 60 steps, and Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) goes forward again.
- Save your art. Choose a PNG size and click Download PNG, download an SVG, or print your drawing.
Every change is stored in your browser on this device, so you can close the tab and continue later. Nothing is sent to a server.
24 Pixel Art Templates to Color and Change
Below the tool you find 24 original pixel art templates, each 16 × 16 pixels with a dark outline: heart, smiley, cat, mushroom, strawberry, rocket, flower, house, rainbow, unicorn head, star, apple, fish, butterfly, tree, sun, ice cream, pumpkin, ghost, snowman, Christmas tree, dog, bunny, and cactus. Click one to load it onto the canvas, then recolor it, add details, or print it. Your previous drawing is not lost, because Undo brings it back.
Check “Outline only, to color in yourself” before you click a template, and the tool loads only the dark outline. Fill the shapes with your own colors on screen, or print the outline as a picture with grid and color it with pencils.
The Drawing Tools
Pixel art is about single, deliberate pixels, so every tool works on whole squares of the grid. There is no blur and no anti-aliasing unless you place the in-between colors yourself.
| Tool | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Pencil | B or P | Paints pixels in the current color. Brush sizes 1, 2, 3, and 4 pixels. |
| Eraser | E | Makes pixels transparent, in the same four brush sizes. |
| Fill | G | Fills all touching pixels of the same color. With “Fill replaces every pixel of that color” it recolors that color everywhere. |
| Color picker | I | Takes the color of a pixel on the canvas and switches back to the pencil. |
| Line | L | Drag from start to end for a straight one-pixel line. |
| Rectangle | R | Drag for a one-pixel rectangle outline. Fill it afterwards with the fill tool. |
| Move view | H | Drag to scroll the canvas when you have zoomed in, which is handy on a phone. |
The zoom buttons enlarge the canvas from 100% up to 800%. Thin grid lines separate every pixel, and slightly darker lines appear every 8 pixels, so you can count rows without losing track. Under the canvas you always see the grid size, the number of colors you used, and the position of the pixel under your mouse.
Mirror Drawing for Symmetric Sprites
Most characters, faces, potions, and spaceships are symmetric. Set Mirror to “Left | right” and draw only one half: the other half appears at the same time. “Top | bottom” mirrors across the horizontal middle, and “Four ways” mirrors into all four corners, which is perfect for tiles, snowflakes, and badges. A dashed line shows the mirror axis. Press M to switch between the modes. Mirroring also works with the fill, line, and rectangle tools. If you want rotational patterns with 6 or 12 segments, our mandala maker is the better tool.
Flip, Rotate, and Resize
“Flip left to right” and “Flip upside down” turn the whole drawing, which helps you check whether a figure leans or looks off balance. “Rotate 90°” turns it a quarter turn clockwise and swaps width and height. When you change the grid size, the drawing stays anchored in the top left corner: a larger grid adds empty pixels to the right and bottom, a smaller one crops them. Undo brings back anything that was cut off.
Retro Palettes and Your Own Colors
A limited palette is one of the main rules of good pixel art. Fewer colors make shapes read clearly at small sizes, and they force you to plan light and shadow instead of picking a new shade for every pixel. The pixel art maker includes six ready palettes:
- Basic 16: black, three grays, white, and eleven saturated colors for general drawing.
- PICO-8 (16): the 16 fixed colors of the PICO-8 fantasy console, a favorite palette of indie game makers.
- Game Boy green (4): four shades of green in the style of the original 1989 Game Boy screen. Drawing with only four values is a great exercise in light and dark.
- Commodore 64 (16): the muted, slightly warm colors of the 1982 home computer.
- CGA (16): the strong 16 colors of early IBM PC graphics.
- Grayscale (8): eight even steps from black to white for value studies and shading practice.
“My colors” collects up to 32 colors that you add yourself, and it is saved in your browser. Below the palette, “Colors in your drawing” shows every color you have used so far. Click one to keep drawing with exactly that color.
If you need a fresh color scheme, build one in our color palette generator and enter the HEX codes in the color field. The basics of hue, value, and saturation are explained in our guide to basic color theory, and our article on complementary colors shows how to make a small sprite stand out against its background.
Download a Sharp PNG or an SVG
Pixel art must never be scaled with smoothing, because blurred edges destroy the look. The pixel art maker therefore enlarges your drawing by whole numbers only, with every pixel turned into a clean square block.
| Grid | ×1 | ×8 | ×16 | ×32 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 × 16 | 16 px | 128 px | 256 px | 512 px |
| 32 × 32 | 32 px | 256 px | 512 px | 1,024 px |
| 64 × 64 | 64 px | 512 px | 1,024 px | 2,048 px |
| 128 × 128 | 128 px | 1,024 px | 2,048 px | 4,096 px |
The PNG size list offers ×1, ×2, ×4, ×8, ×16, and ×32, as long as the image stays at or below 4,096 pixels per side. Use ×1 for a game sprite and a larger size for social media, a print, or a sticker. If the background is set to Transparent, the PNG is transparent; with Color, the chosen background color is filled in.
The SVG download is a vector file made of square blocks, so it stays sharp at any size and opens in Illustrator, Inkscape, Cricut Design Space, and laser or vinyl cutting software.
Print Pixel Art as a Grid, a Color by Number Sheet, or Grid Paper
The Print button opens a print-ready page on US Letter or A4 with numbered rows and columns along the edges. Choose one of four layouts:
- Picture with grid: your drawing with a fine grid and a darker line every 8 pixels. Use it as a pattern for cross-stitch, perler or fuse beads, mosaics, LEGO mosaics, or knitting charts, where one pixel is one stitch, bead, or tile.
- Color by number grid: an empty grid with a number in each cell and a color key below it. Children and adults color the squares and see the picture appear, just like our printable color by number worksheets. This layout works for drawings up to about 64 × 64 pixels, so the numbers stay readable.
- Picture and empty grid to copy: your drawing in color with an empty grid of the same size below it, so you can copy the picture square by square with colored pencils. Each square is about 7 mm on Letter or A4 paper for a 16 × 16 drawing.
- Empty grid paper: a blank grid in the size of your canvas to plan pixel art with pencil and paper. For other grids, such as dot or isometric paper, use our graph paper generator.
Square grids are much older than computers. The tesserae of a Roman mosaic and the dots of pointillism both build a picture from small units of color, which is why pixel art drawings translate so well into beads, tiles, and stitches.
Pixel Art Maker or Image to Pixel Art?
This pixel art maker is for drawing from scratch. If you already have a photo, a painting, or a sketch and want to turn it into pixels automatically, use our image to pixel art converter instead. It reduces any picture to a pixel grid with a retro palette and dithering. A good workflow is to convert a photo there, then redraw and clean up the important details by hand here, because automatic conversion never decides as well as you do which pixels carry a face or an outline.
Tips for Better Pixel Art
- Start small. A 16 × 16 or 32 × 32 grid is enough for an icon or a character. Every pixel matters, and you finish a piece in one sitting.
- Outline first, then fill. Draw the silhouette with a dark color, check that it reads at 100% zoom, and only then add color.
- Use three values per color. A base tone, one shadow, and one highlight are usually enough. The Grayscale and Game Boy palettes are good for practicing this.
- Avoid jagged lines. Diagonal lines look smooth when the steps are even, for example 2 pixels across and 1 down, again and again.
- Avoid orphan pixels. Single pixels of a different color that do not belong to a shape look like noise. Remove them with the eraser or the fill tool.
- Check the silhouette. Flip the drawing left to right now and then. A fresh view shows mistakes in proportion immediately.
Want to go further? Our overview of digital art explains where pixel art fits among digital techniques, and our guide on how to sell digital art helps if you want to offer your sprites, stickers, or prints.
Who Uses a Pixel Art Maker?
- Artists and illustrators who want to practice composition, value, and color with strict limits.
- Game makers who need sprites, tiles, and icons with a transparent background in an exact size.
- Crafters who plan cross-stitch, bead, knitting, and mosaic patterns on a printed grid.
- Teachers and parents who print color by number grids for kids or teach coordinates with the numbered rows and columns.
- Kids who simply like to draw hearts, cats, and robots one square at a time.
Privacy
The pixel art maker runs completely in your browser. Your drawing is never uploaded. It is saved in the local storage of your browser on this device only, so it is not available on another device, and it disappears if you clear your browser data. There is no sign-up, no limit, and no watermark on your downloads.
More Free Art Tools
All our tools are free, run in your browser, and need no account. See them all on the free art tools page.
- Photo to painting: turn a photo into an oil or watercolor painting.
- Photo to sketch: turn a photo into a pencil sketch or line art.
- Photo to coloring page: turn any picture into a printable coloring page.
- Image to pixel art: convert an image into editable pixel art.
- Notan generator: plan light and dark shapes with a two- or three-value study.
- Art grid tool: put a drawing grid over any photo.
- Pose reference: practice figure drawing with timed poses.
- Graph Paper Printable: print graph paper, dot grid, isometric, and hex paper to scale.
- Aspect Ratio Calculator for Art: work out aspect ratios and scale art to any canvas size.
- DPI Calculator: find the DPI and largest print size of any image.
- Online drawing board: draw and paint online with brushes, layers, and symmetry.
- Golden ratio overlay: check your composition with a golden spiral and rule of thirds.
- Perspective grid generator: print one-, two-, and three-point perspective grids.
- Paint by number generator: turn a photo into a printable paint by number template.
- Mandala maker: draw symmetrical mandalas and print them as coloring pages.
- Connect the dots maker: turn a picture into a printable dot to dot worksheet.
- Picture frame and mat size calculator: work out mat openings and frame sizes for your art.
- Image color picker: find the exact colors in any photo or painting.
- Color name finder: get the name of any HEX, RGB, or photo color.
- Color wheel: find complementary, triadic, and analogous colors.
- Color mixer: mix paint or screen colors and find paint recipes.
- Color palette generator: create matching color schemes or a palette from an image.
- Random color generator: get random colors and palettes with paint mixing tips.
- Tint and shade generator: make tints, shades, and tones of any color.
- Color blindness simulator: see images and palettes as color blind people do.
- Tracing Worksheets: make tracing worksheets with letters, numbers, and lines.
- Calligraphy Practice Sheets: print calligraphy and hand lettering practice sheets.
- Art Style Quiz: find out which art style fits you.
- Cursive font generator: turn text into cursive letters to copy or download.
- Gothic font generator: write in blackletter and Old English letters.
- Art pricing calculator: find a fair price for your paintings and prints.
- Art quiz: guess famous paintings, artists, and styles.
- Art prompt generator: get random ideas for drawing and painting.
- Random character generator: create an original character with traits and a palette.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is This Pixel Art Maker Free?
Yes. You can draw, download, and print as much as you like. There is no account, no watermark, and no paid version.
What Size Should Pixel Art Be?
For icons and small game sprites, 16 × 16 or 32 × 32 pixels are classic sizes. Characters with more detail often use 48 × 48 or 64 × 64. For sharing online, download the finished drawing at a larger PNG size such as ×16, which keeps every pixel crisp.
How Do I Make a Pixel Art Background Transparent?
Set Background to Transparent and leave the background pixels empty or erase them. The checkerboard pattern on the canvas shows transparent areas, and the downloaded PNG keeps them transparent.
Why Does My Pixel Art Look Blurry When I Enlarge It?
Most image programs scale with smoothing, which blends neighboring pixels. Download the size you need directly from the pixel art maker instead, because it enlarges by whole numbers without smoothing. If you scale it elsewhere, choose “nearest neighbor” as the scaling method.
Can I Turn a Photo Into Pixel Art?
Yes, with our separate image to pixel art converter. It turns a photo into pixels automatically. You can then use this pixel art maker to draw new pixel art by hand.
Is My Pixel Art Saved?
Yes, in your browser on this device. The drawing is restored automatically when you come back. To keep it for good, download a PNG or SVG, because clearing your browser data also removes the saved drawing.
Can I Use the Pixel Art Maker on a Phone or iPad?
Yes. Draw with your finger or a stylus. Zoom in with the plus button and use Move view to scroll around large grids.
Can I Use My Pixel Art Commercially?
Your drawings belong to you. The tool adds nothing to them, so you can use them in games, on products, and in prints. If you copy a character from a game or film, the rights to that character remain with its owner.
