ASCII drawing canvas
Draw with characters, shapes, fill and text on an editable canvas.
About ASCII drawing canvas
Create text art directly on a character grid rather than repeatedly counting spaces in an editor. Each cell contains one printable character. Mouse, touch and keyboard controls work alongside an editable source view.
Steps, and limitations
How to use it
- Choose a brush character and drawing tool. Drag on the canvas to draw, use a template, or open a text file or saved project.
- Add shapes and text, undo or redo gestures, resize without unintended cropping, flip the drawing or trim empty edges.
- Save an editable project for later, or export plain text, Markdown, SVG, PNG, HTML or ANSI.
Things to know
- Arrow keys move the cursor, typing writes, Space applies the selected tool, Delete erases and Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes. For a line, rectangle or ellipse, Enter marks its first and last corners.
- Drawings support up to 240 columns by 160 rows. A smaller canvas cannot crop nonempty cells unless you explicitly enable cropping. Undo history holds the latest 40 committed changes.
- Use single-column characters in the canvas. Wide emoji and CJK text are better suited to the table or formatting tool. Changes are held in memory; download a project before leaving the page.