free tool, no sign-up
Pixel Art Grid Maker
Make a pixel art template to print, or paint on an 8, 16, or 32 grid. The pixel art grid maker has a small color palette, an eraser, and a PNG download.
Changing size keeps whatever is already drawn in the top-left corner.
Painting with Black. White fills a square solid. The eraser restores the empty grid.
Click and drag to paint
0 of 256 squares filled
The Pixel Art Grid Maker is a classroom art tool for coloring a square grid on screen and for printing a blank pixel art template. Choose 8, 16, or 32 squares along each side, pick from a small palette, and click or drag to paint. An eraser and a clear button fix mistakes. Download PNG saves the colored picture on a white background. Switch to the paper template to preview empty squares with a title line and a name line, then print a worksheet students can color by hand. It runs in the browser, needs no account, and is built for art class rather than game development.
Paint on the pixel art grid maker
The Paint mode is a square sheet of graph paper you color with a mouse, a finger, or a stylus. Press a square and drag, and every square the pointer crosses fills with the color you picked. A fast swipe still fills a solid line of squares, so a 32 by 32 grid stays drawable even when the squares are small.
Twelve colors sit in one row: black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink, brown, and gray. That is enough for a flag, a flower, a pet, or a simple portrait, and few enough that a class does not spend the lesson hunting through a color wheel. The selected swatch has a ring around it, and the line under the row names the color you are using.
White and the eraser do different jobs. White paints a solid white square and covers the guide lines. The eraser puts those lines back, so the square looks empty again. Clear wipes the whole picture. If you only want to undo a few squares, drag the eraser across them.
Picking a grid: 8, 16, or 32
Three sizes are built in. An 8 by 8 grid has 64 big squares and suits the youngest students, a one-sitting warm-up, or a design that should read from the back of the room. Sixteen by sixteen, 256 squares, is the everyday choice for a lesson: large enough for a face or a house, small enough to finish. Thirty-two by thirty-two has 1,024 squares and is there for older students who want shading, lettering, or a more careful picture.
Switching size does not throw the picture away. The squares you already filled stay in the top-left corner. Growing from 8 to 16 keeps the small picture and adds empty squares around its right and bottom edges. Shrinking from 32 to 16 keeps the top-left 16 by 16 and drops the rest, so check the corner you care about before you go smaller. Clear is the way to start over on purpose.
On a phone the 32 by 32 squares get small. They stay in proportion and the drag still fills them; a laptop or tablet is simply more comfortable for that size. Eight and sixteen stay easy to tap on a narrow screen.
Print a blank pixel art template
Paper template is the other mode. It shows an empty grid of squares, plus a title line and a name line, laid out like a worksheet. Pick 8, 16, or 32 first. The preview on screen is the same grid that will print, so you can see whether the squares are a size your class can color with pencils or markers.
Type a title and a name if you want them printed, or leave either line blank. A blank line stays a ruled line on the printout, which is what you want when students will write their own names. Print template opens a clean sheet: the heading Pixel art template, the size, the title line, the name line, and the empty squares. Nothing else from the website comes with it, apart from a small line at the bottom.
The sheet is square and sized to sit on one page of letter or A4 paper. If a 32 by 32 grid looks tight, that is the trade for more squares; 8 and 16 leave much fatter boxes. Turn on background graphics only if your browser drops the borders, which it should not, because the lines are real borders rather than a colored background.
Download a PNG of the finished picture
Download PNG saves the painted picture, not the blank template. The file is built in the browser from the squares on screen. Each square becomes a solid block of color on a white background, without the guide lines, so the file looks like finished pixel art rather than graph paper. Empty squares and squares you painted white both come out white in the file.
The download is named with the size, such as pixel-art-16x16.png. Open it in any image viewer, drop it into a slide, or print it if you want a color copy of a student's finished piece. The blank worksheet is the Print template button in the other mode; the PNG is the colored result.
Nothing is uploaded. The picture stays on the device that drew it, and leaving the page clears it, so download or print before you close the tab.
Using the grids in class
A blank pixel art template is an easy art-class handout: one printed page, a title, a name, and squares to fill. Younger grades do well with 8 by 8 and a short list of things to draw, such as an apple, a boat, or their initial. Older grades can plan a 16 or 32 picture in pencil on the printout, then rebuild the same design in Paint mode and download it.
The same page works for lessons that are only partly about art. Symmetry is obvious when students color one half of a 16 by 16 grid and mirror it. Multiplication shows up in the square counts: 8 times 8, 16 times 16, 32 times 32. A flag, a map symbol, or a habitat animal gives the grid a subject from another lesson without any extra materials.
Keep the activity on paper and on this page. Students are coloring squares, not building a game, a sprite sheet, or an animation. If someone finishes early, a second template at a larger size is a better extension than adding rules.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a pixel art template?
A pixel art template is a printed grid of empty squares, with a title line and a name line, that students color by hand. Open Paper template, choose 8, 16, or 32, and press Print template to get one.
How do I use the pixel art grid maker?
Stay on Paint, choose a grid size, tap a color, then click and drag across the squares. Use the eraser for single mistakes and Clear to wipe the picture. Download PNG saves the colored result.
Can I print a blank grid with a name line?
Yes. Paper template shows a title line and a name line above the empty squares. Type them in to print the words, or leave them empty so students can write on the lines.
Which grid size should students use?
Use 8 by 8 for young children and short activities, 16 by 16 for a normal lesson, and 32 by 32 when students want more detail and have time to finish a thousand squares.
How do I save my pixel art?
Press Download PNG in Paint mode. You get a white-background image named with the grid size. The picture is not stored on the site, so download it before you leave the page.
What is the difference between white and the eraser?
White paints a solid white square and hides the guide lines. The eraser removes color so the square looks empty and the guide lines show again. In the downloaded PNG, both look white because the file background is white.
Does this work on a tablet?
Yes. Drag with a finger or a stylus the same way you drag with a mouse. Squares on a 32 by 32 grid are small on a phone, so 8 or 16 is easier there.
Can I make game sprites with this?
You can draw a small character, but this is a classroom art tool. It has no animation, no sprite sheet, and no tileset export. Print the pixel art template or download a PNG of the picture you painted.