What is pixel art?

Pixel art is a picture drawn on a small grid, one square at a time. It comes from old consoles and computers that could only show a few colors at a low resolution, and it's still used for game sprites, icons and favicons. Because the image is so small, it gets scaled up by a whole number, so every pixel stays a sharp square instead of turning blurry.

Tool description

Pick a canvas in the Canvas menu: 8 × 8, 16 × 16 (the default), 32 × 32 or 64 × 64 pixels, or type any width and height under "Custom size in pixels". Changing the size keeps your drawing at the top left corner and crops it or adds empty space on the right and bottom. "Show grid" in the same menu turns the grid lines on and off.

The toolbar has four tools. Pencil paints pixels as you click or drag, Eraser makes them transparent, Fill paints a whole area of touching pixels of the same color, empty areas included, and "Pick color" takes the color of the pixel you click. The right mouse button erases with any tool. The color button opens 12 colors plus "Custom color".

When you're done, open File and click "Download PNG". Empty pixels stay transparent, shown as a checkerboard while you draw. The PNG is scaled up by a whole number to at least 512 pixels on its longest side, so a 16 × 16 drawing downloads as 512 × 512 with crisp pixels. "New drawing" clears the canvas and keeps its size.

Everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved, so download the PNG before you close the page.

Keyboard shortcuts

  • Undo: Ctrl+Z, or ⌘Z on a Mac
  • Redo: Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z, or ⇧⌘Z on a Mac

Features

  • Pencil, eraser, fill and color picker, with the right mouse button to erase
  • Canvas sizes from 8 × 8 to 64 × 64, or any custom size
  • PNG download with sharp, scaled up pixels and a transparent background