Grid Your Art Grid Your ArtPut a grid over any photo, or compose that photo to fit the canvas you already own. Both tools run in your browser.
Puts a grid over your photo and calculates the measurements for you. Fixed to your photos aspect ratio.
Position, crop, and scale any photo to suit any canvas, then grid. Compose free, $2 unlocks unlimited downloads for 1 hour.
Unlock a reference and get the complete bundle: gridded and ungridded versions in colour and black & white, all cropped to your canvas dimensions with the exact composition you choose. You also get a grid guide with the exact measurements for your canvas.
Position, crop and scale any photo to fit your canvas exactly, then customise the grid to suit your style.
Type your real dimensions in cm or inches. The perfect frame for any reference.
Drag, resize, and position your image exactly how you want it on the canvas.
Choose the number of rows and columns that match your skill level or reference complexity.
Choose the colour and opacity that contrasts your reference photo to make it easier to work with.
Put the same grid over your photo and your canvas, then copy one square at a time. A whole portrait becomes a set of small, easy shapes, and your proportions come out perfect.
No special talent required. Just a reference, a canvas, and a grid.
Read the beginner's guide →Grid Your Art came to be after I attended a charcoal drawing workshop built around the grid method.
At the beginning of the class, the teacher showed everyone how she prepared her reference grids. Like many artists I'd met, her process was a bit of a McGyver affair, using whatever tools she could piece together to get the job done.
Having come from a photography background, I was good at using photo editing software, so it didn't take long before a queue formed at my laptop as the class realised it would be more efficient to have me prepare their grids for them.
I was happy to help, but I couldn't shake the thought that everyone was leaving the workshop with the skills to draw from a gridded reference, but without an easy way to prepare one for themselves at home.
The experience stuck with me. Years later, while discussing art methods with a friend, I found myself looking for a simple tool I could recommend. I couldn't find one. The tools online were still confusing, inflexible, or expected you to know your way around photo editing software just to prepare a drawing reference.
So I built Grid Your Art, a simpler way for artists to prepare their references.
No photo editing software. No complicated calculations. No relying on your tech-savvy nephew.
Just a simple tool that prepares your drawing references, so you can get back to making art.
Over 60 pre-gridded reference images for A4 and other A-series canvases accross a range of subjects. Every pack includes all 5 references: with and without grids, in colour and black and white, plus an A4 grid guide
See the full collection →The grid method is a simple drawing technique that helps artists transfer a reference photo onto paper or canvas with accurate proportions. By breaking an image into smaller sections, it's easier to judge shapes, placement and scale without feeling overwhelmed.
The grid method works by dividing both your reference photo and your drawing surface into matching squares. Instead of copying an entire image at once, you focus on one small section at a time, making it much easier to improve proportions, enlarge drawings and capture fine details with confidence.
Compare one square at a time instead of guessing the whole drawing.
Scale a reference photo up to any canvas size while keeping every proportion correct.
Break complex reference images into manageable sections and build confidence.
A popular technique for portrait drawing, wildlife art and realistic paintings.
From first-time artists to professionals creating large-scale murals and commissions.
What the tool does, what the $2 covers, and how to actually use the grid method once you have printed it.
Creating your grid is free. You can upload a reference photo, set your canvas size, compose the image, adjust the grid and see exactly what you are going to get without paying anything. Downloading the finished files costs $2. The sample reference packs are completely free and have no payment step at all.
One hour of unlimited downloads. Once you have paid, you can download as many references as you like for the next sixty minutes, with as many different photos, canvas sizes and grid settings as you want. It is not one image for $2. If you are preparing references for a whole class or a run of commissions, one pass covers the lot.
No. There is no subscription, no recurring charge and no stored card. You pay $2, you get an hour, and it ends. If you come back in six months and want to download again, you pay another $2.
No. There is nothing to sign up for and no password to remember, either to use the tool or to download the free sample packs. Your hour of access is tied to your browser, not to a login. The only time we ask for an email address is at the checkout, so that Stripe can send you a receipt, and it is used for nothing else.
Five, every time:
The two ungridded versions matter more than people expect. When you are halfway through a drawing and want to check a shape without grid lines in the way, that is the file you open.
A separate printable sheet that tells you what to draw on your actual canvas. It gives you the canvas dimensions, the number of rows and columns, and the size of each square in centimetres or inches. Instead of working out that a 50cm canvas divided into 8 columns needs squares of 6.25cm, it is already calculated for you.
About 12.4 megapixels, delivered as PNG. That is comfortably sharp printed at A4 and still good at A3. If you are working larger than that, the grid guide is the file that matters, since it scales to any canvas size regardless of the photo’s resolution.
This is the problem the tool exists to solve. Your photo is probably 3:2 or 4:3. Your canvas is whatever you bought, perhaps 40 by 50cm. Those do not match, so something has to be cropped or something has to be stretched.
Type your real canvas dimensions in centimetres or inches and Grid Your Art creates a frame at exactly that shape. You then drag, scale and reposition your photo inside the frame until the composition is right, and the grid is applied to what you have framed. Nothing is ever stretched, and you decide what stays in and what falls outside the edge.
Most grid tools skip this. They put a grid over the whole photo and leave the mismatch for you to deal with on the canvas.
Any size, in centimetres or inches. Standard canvases, A-series paper, odd sizes, very large ones. You type the real numbers rather than picking from a list, so a 27 by 63cm panel works the same as an A4 sheet.
As many as you need for the grid to actually map the features you are trying to place. That is the rule, and it is more useful than any table of recommended numbers.
The grid is a measuring tool, so it only earns its keep when the lines fall near your landmarks. On a portrait, that means squares that meaningfully separate the corner of an eye, the base of the nose, the corner of the mouth. If a whole eye sits inside a single square, that square has not helped you, it has just handed you a smaller version of the same problem.
So the resolution follows the subject. A bold silhouette or a simple shape needs very few lines. A face, an animal, or anything where a couple of millimetres changes the likeness needs considerably more than most people expect. Detailed and photorealistic work needs more again.
Rows and columns are set independently, from 2 up to 20 each, so you can match the grid to the shape of your canvas rather than forcing a square. If your canvas is 40 by 50cm, 8 columns and 10 rows gives you square cells, which are far easier to copy from than rectangles.
The practical test: set a resolution, look at where the lines land, and increase it if they are missing your landmarks. Changing it costs nothing.
Yes. You can set the number of rows and columns independently, choose the grid colour, and adjust the opacity. This matters more than it sounds: a black grid vanishes over dark hair, and a white one vanishes over a bright sky. Being able to pick a colour that contrasts with your particular photo is the difference between a usable reference and a frustrating one.
JPG, PNG and WebP work everywhere. Photos straight off a camera or phone are usually fine as they are, although HEIC files from an iPhone may need converting first on some Windows and Android browsers, since not every browser can decode them.
Yes. It runs in the browser on desktop, tablet and phone. Larger screens are easier for fine positioning, but nothing is desktop-only.
No. There is no software, no app and no plugin. It runs in your browser.
No. Your reference image is processed entirely inside your own browser and is never sent to our servers. We never see it, store it or have any way to retrieve it. Closing the tab is enough to remove it.
A technique for copying a reference accurately by dividing both the reference and your drawing surface into matching squares, then working one square at a time. Instead of judging a whole face at once, you only ever solve a small, manageable shape. Proportions stay correct even when you scale a small photo up to a large canvas. It has been in use since at least ancient Egypt, and Dürer, Leonardo and Chuck Close all relied on versions of it.
No. A grid helps you see proportions accurately. It does not draw for you, choose your values, mix your colours or make any compositional decision on your behalf. Every mark is still yours, and comparing shapes square by square actively trains your eye, which is why many artists find they need the grid less over time. It is a measuring tool, in the same family as sight measuring with a pencil.
Use the grid guide from your download, which already gives you the square size, so there is no arithmetic to do.
Rule the lines as lightly as you possibly can, with a hard pencil, 2H or harder. Some artists go all the way to 9H, which leaves a line you can just about see and almost nothing to remove later. Pressing hard causes two separate problems: heavy graphite is difficult to lift, and the pressure dents the paper, leaving grooves that still show through your shading long after the pencil is gone. You only need to see the lines, not admire them.
A decent straight edge matters more than people expect. Avoid folding rulers, whose joints put small bumps in an otherwise straight line.
On canvas, thinned paint, charcoal or a watercolour pencil all work, since your first layer covers them.
You do not have to wait until the end. As each square comes out accurate, lift the lines in that patch so they stop interfering with your shading. By the time the drawing is finished, most of the grid has already gone.
Use a kneadable eraser rather than a standard vinyl or school eraser. Vinyl erasers are built to shift dark graphite and grip the paper hard enough to abrade the surface, which is exactly what you do not want on a piece you have just spent hours on. A kneadable eraser lifts light lines off the top of the paper without touching the tooth underneath.
This is the real reason to grid lightly in the first place. A light 2H line lifts cleanly. A firm HB one does not.
Yes. Oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, pastel, coloured pencil and graphite all work the same way. Watercolourists in particular tend to use the black and white version to plan values before the first wash, since watercolour is unforgiving once it is down.
Yes, and it is arguably where the grid method earns its keep most. Enter the real dimensions of the wall or canvas and the grid guide scales with them, so a 3 metre wall gets squares sized for a 3 metre wall. Scaling accurately is the hardest part of large work, and this is exactly the problem the grid solves.
A library of photographs, already gridded and ready to print, covering animals, portraits, landscapes and still life. Each one comes as the same five files you get from the tool. They are free with no sign-up, and they are useful if you want to try the grid method before gridding anything of your own, or if you simply need something to draw. Every photo is credited to its photographer and sourced from Pexels.
Yes to both. The source photographs come from Pexels, whose licence permits commercial use without attribution, so drawings and paintings you make from them are yours to sell. Teachers are welcome to print them for a class. The one thing the licence does not allow is redistributing the photographs themselves as a standalone product.
