Create drawing grids instantly. Upload any reference image, choose from 82 grids & composition overlays, customize grid size, colors & opacity, & get high-quality downloads — no signup required. Trusted by 60,000+ artists worldwide.
No other free grid tool comes close: composition, perspective, sacred geometry, design grids, templates, and architecture in one place.
Move, rotate, and resize each overlay independently. Stack guides and place vanishing points exactly where you need them.
A2 through Letter and beyond. Export high-resolution PNG, JPG, PDF, or SVG without watermarks.
Your reference image never leaves your browser. No upload, no account, no watermark, and no usage cap.
| Ctrl + Z | Undo |
| Ctrl + Y | Redo |
| Esc | Deselect overlay |
| Alt + drag | Free positioning (no snap) |
| Ctrl + scroll | Zoom canvas |
| Ctrl + P | |
| ? | Show this help |
The whole workflow, start to finish — one photograph carried through all three plates below. Every step runs in your browser, in the tool you just scrolled past.
Drop a photo onto the canvas or browse your files. It stays on your device — nothing uploads, ever.
JPG · PNG · GIF · WEBP
Choose any of the 82 grids, from a simple square grid to rule of thirds and full perspective, and stack as many as you need.
82 overlays · 11 categories
Fit, rotate, and recolour each overlay independently, then print directly or save at true print resolution.
PNG · JPG · PDF · SVG · up to 600 DPI
End to end, about a minute. No signup, no upload.
See how Grid Maker Pro transforms your reference photos with professional drawing grids. Compare before and after views across portraits, landscapes, still life, and figurative art. Perfect for artists seeking accurate proportions and precise transfers.
With Grid Maker Pro, you can apply professional drawing grids instantly to any reference image, keeping your proportions accurate. Whether you're sketching portraits, planning a painting, or teaching composition to art students, you can overlay custom grids, isolate key sections, and export your reference photo – all in just one click.
Try Grid Maker Free
Drawing grids for portraits, pixel-perfect UI layouts, stencil guides, class printouts — see the worked use cases, or read how it works end to end, from reference image to exported grid.
Grid Maker Pro makes it simple to go from reference photo to structured sketch with professional drawing grids. Toggle overlays instantly, compare before/after views, and set up proportions without distraction.
From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, master artists used the classical Grid Method to transfer accurate proportions from life to canvas. Albrecht Dürer popularized this drawing technique: a frame of strings between artist and model created a fixed reference grid, so forms could be measured and transferred square by square with precision.
Grid Maker Pro carries that tradition forward for today's digital workflows. Upload any reference image, overlay customizable grid guides, label cells (A1, B2…), and export high-resolution files — so modern artists can break down complex subjects, plan compositions, and maintain traditional precision with digital efficiency. For the full picture, read our guide to 82 composition overlays.
¹ Albrecht Dürer, Underweysung der Messung, Nuremberg, 1525.
See how Grid Maker Pro transforms reference images across different art styles with professional grid overlays.
Perfect for portrait artists: capture accurate facial proportions and features with Grid Maker Pro's customizable drawing grids.
No signup required · Works with any image · Download instantly
82 overlays · 4 export formats · up to 600 DPI · 0 uploads
The customizable grids, labels and exports the grid method needs — free, and entirely on your device. This is the whole toolset.
Rule of thirds to golden ratio, Loomis head to perspective grids — 82 customizable overlays across 11 categories, on any reference photo. Your six most recent stay a click away.
Composition · Sacred geometry · Perspective · Dynamic symmetry · 7 more categoriesSized to real paper from A5 to A2, A4 included. A transparent grid-only PNG, copy to clipboard and direct print round it out.
One geometry drives every format — screen size never changes the printA1, B2 cell labels — name any square and find it again on paper.
Scale up from reference to canvas with matching cell counts, ready for accurate transfer.
Colour, width and opacity, set per overlay — with an eyedropper that samples any pixel in the photo.
Black & white, sepia, contrast and brightness — prepare the reference before you grid it.
Run several overlays at once; each keeps its own position, scale, rotation and styling.
Named presets keep the setups you reuse, and a share link encodes the whole workspace into the URL.
The grid renders in your browser. No server ever sees the photo — there is no server to send it to.
Nine working pages, one for each trade that draws on a grid — photography, transfer drawing, sacred geometry, perspective, lattices, classical proportion, layout, typography and architecture. Each opens its whole family on one image, stacked and compared side by side.
100 grid makers · four calculators · one engine underneath
Each one opens the same engine on the overlay that fits the job — pick by the work, not the feature list.
Scale a reference onto paper, canvas or wall.
Construct heads and figures before you render them.
Vanishing points, axonometric and technical grids.
Check and plan framing on any photograph.
Exact constructions of the classical figures.
Panels, icons, logos and typographic structure.
Hex, dot and radial frameworks.
Numbers first — cells, ratios and transfer sizes.
The web tool here is free forever — all 82 grids, in your browser. The app does the one thing a browser can’t: it locks your reference over your real paper, canvas, or wall through the camera, so you draw the proportions by hand.
Free to try — no account, no signup. The web tool stays free forever.
35 questions · four topics · answered in a line or two
Everything people ask before they drop an image into the tool — cost, privacy, exports, and how the grid method actually works.
A grid maker lays a grid overlay over your photo so you can copy, crop, or compose from it accurately. Grid Maker Pro is a free browser grid maker with 82 overlays, from a plain drawing grid to the golden ratio — the whole set is in the Grid Library.
Drop your image into the tool, choose an overlay, and the grid is drawn over the picture straight away. There is nothing to configure before you start.
No. Grid Maker Pro runs entirely in your browser on any device, and can be installed as an app from your browser if you would rather keep it on your home screen.
No. There is no signup, no login, and no email — the tool opens and works the moment the page loads.
JPG, PNG, WebP, and GIF all work. Your image is read on your own device, so there is no upload size limit to work around.
No. The grid is drawn over a copy on screen and your original file is never touched. Export a gridded copy to print, or a transparent grid-only PNG to lay over a reference you already have.
82 overlays in 11 categories — rule of thirds, golden ratio, Loomis head construction, perspective, dynamic symmetry, sacred geometry, typography and architecture systems among them. Each one is catalogued in the 82 composition overlays guide.
Yes. Stack as many overlays as you need, and move, scale, and rotate each one independently of the others.
Yes — every overlay carries its own colour picker, opacity slider, and line width. An eyedropper samples a colour straight from your photo when the grid is hard to read against it.
Yes. The square grid runs from 4 to 40 cells along the short side, and the rectangular and custom grids take independent row and column counts up to 50.
Yes — cell labels are a toggle on the drawing grids, so you can name the square you are working in and find the same one again on your paper.
Yes. The fixed-measurement grid takes a real spacing in millimetres, centimetres, or inches, with a heavier line every few cells and measurements labelled along the edges.
Yes. The transfer grid takes your reference size and your canvas size and works out what each cell measures on both, so you can copy square for square at any scale — the arithmetic is explained in how to enlarge a drawing.
Yes. Black and white, brightness, and contrast are built in, which helps when you are reading values rather than colour.
Yes — PNG, JPG, PDF, or SVG at 150, 300, or 600 DPI, sized to A5 through A2, Letter, Legal, or square paper, with the overlays locked exactly where you placed them.
Yes. A transparent grid-only PNG lets you drop the same grid over artwork in another app, or print it as a clean guide sheet.
Yes. Save named workspaces in your browser, or copy a share link that reopens the identical grid, position, and settings on any device.
Yes. It runs in any modern browser on mobile, tablet, or desktop, with nothing to install.
You divide the reference into equal squares, draw the same squares on your paper, then copy the contents of one square at a time. Each square is small enough to judge accurately, so proportion errors stay contained — start with a square drawing grid.
Keep the same number of squares on both surfaces and make the paper squares larger: a 4-inch square copied into an 8-inch square doubles the drawing with no measuring. The full walkthrough is our guide to enlarging a drawing with the grid method.
Fewer squares for loose blocking, more for detail. A 4×4 grid is enough to place a figure on the page; a portrait usually wants 8×8 or finer before the eyes and mouth land where they should.
Around half an inch on a 4×6 photo, an inch on anything larger. One-inch squares are the studio default because they double and halve cleanly when you scale the drawing up or down.
Yes — same count, different size. Matching counts with larger squares on the paper is exactly what enlarges the drawing, and it is why the two grids must stay evenly spaced.
Top-left, then across and down, so your hand does not drag through finished squares. Draw your paper grid lightly in graphite — it should disappear under the work rather than need erasing out of it.
Start with the rule of thirds for a fast, decisive placement; switch to the golden ratio when the composition needs a softer, more gradual off-centre emphasis. Both are one click in the tool.
No — the grid method has been standard studio practice since the Renaissance, and Dürer, Van Gogh, and Chuck Close all worked over grids. The longer answer is our guide on whether tracing is cheating.
Artists, photographers, designers, architects, quilters, cross-stitch and knitting crafters, tattooists, teachers, and tabletop game masters all reach for a grid overlay for the same reason: accurate placement.
Yes, free forever. There is no paid tier, no trial, and no metered usage — every overlay and every export option is open to everyone.
No. The tool runs entirely in your browser and there is no server to upload to, so your reference image never leaves your device.
None. No ads, no watermark on exports, and no quiet downscaling of what you save — the file you export is the resolution you chose.
Yes, after the first visit. The tool is stored on your device, so it opens without a connection — useful in a studio, a life-drawing room, or anywhere the signal is poor.
Yes — a counted grid is the same problem in every medium. Set the rows and columns to match your fabric count, quilt blocks, or wall sections, turn on cell labels, and work square by square.
Yes, subject to your own contract terms. Because nothing is uploaded, private references, commissions, and classroom images stay on your machine.
It is built by Sujith Puthran, a working artist of 15+ years, who wrote it because the grid tools he could find were either paywalled or wanted his reference photos.
Email support@gridmakerpro.com. Overlay requests get read — several of the 82 started as one.
All 82 overlays · 11 categories · 12 long-form guides
Every overlay has a dedicated reference page with construction details, history, and FAQ. Start from the master library or jump straight to a category.
Learn professional drawing techniques with Grid Maker Pro's expert guides and tutorials.
Start with the grid-method tutorials, or browse the learning hub for articles sorted by skill level.
Four famous logos, four circulating construction grids — only one came from the designer. We measure all four and show which geometry actually holds up.
The brow ellipse opens with the sine of the pitch and the chin's drop shortens with the cosine. Get those two the right way round and tilted heads stop failing.
Two published studies measured whether rule-of-thirds framing predicts how much people like a picture. The answer is not the one the rule's reputation implies.
Stack thirds, phi, the diagonal method and the centre cross on one frame. Which grids agree tells you more about the picture than how many of them do.
Which golden-ratio claims survive measurement, which were debunked and by whom, and what remains of φ once the mysticism is removed — which is more than you'd think.
One trains your eye and costs you time; the other buys accuracy and teaches nothing. Which is right depends on whether the deliverable is a drawing or a skill.
