ASCII Art Drawing Canvas
Draw ASCII art by hand on a character grid — pen, line, rectangle and fill tools, then copy the text out.
🔒 Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded or stored on a server.
The ASCII Art Canvas lets you draw ASCII art online — pictures built entirely out of characters, the classic text art made of #, *, / and | that works anywhere plain text does. Instead of lining up symbols by hand in a text editor, you draw ascii art directly on a grid with your mouse, stylus or finger, and the tool keeps the finished piece as clean, copyable text.
Also on Txtset: write your text out in realistic handwriting.
It works like a small paint program built specifically for text, which is what makes it a genuine ascii drawing tool rather than a converter. Pick a brush character from the palette — including block characters like ░ ▒ ▓ █ for shading and depth — or type your own, then choose a tool: freehand pen, straight line, hollow rectangle, filled box, an eraser, or a flood fill that pours one character across a connected region. Drag to draw; the line, rectangle and box tools show a live preview before you commit, so you can nudge a shape into place before it's final. Set the canvas from 4×3 up to 120×60 characters to fit where the art will live — 80 columns suits a terminal, narrower fits inside a code comment.
People who search for an ascii art drawer or an ascii draw online tool are usually after exactly this: no software to install, nothing to learn, just an empty grid and a brush. Draw ascii the way you would sketch on paper — outline a shape with the line tool, block it in with fill, then go back with the eraser to carve out detail — and the character grid on screen is the finished piece, not a preview of one.
ASCII art earns its keep in plain-text places that don't support images: banners and headers in code comments, section dividers and logos in a README, startup banners printed to a terminal, signatures and decorations on forums and in chat apps that strip images, and the retro, computer-age look people deliberately choose for its own sake. Because the output is text, it travels anywhere text does — email, a commit message, a plain-text file — with nothing to host or embed.
One caveat worth knowing before you paste your art somewhere: it only lines up correctly in a monospaced (fixed-width) font, where every character occupies the same width. A proportional font — the default in most word processors and some chat apps — will visibly warp the alignment. Code editors, terminals, README code blocks and most forums render monospace correctly. The output box below trims trailing spaces from each line automatically, so what you copy pastes cleanly wherever a fixed-width font is used. Everything happens in your browser — nothing you draw is uploaded. Pair it with the Fancy Text Generator for stylish Unicode lettering, or drop finished art into the Online Notepad to keep it.
How to use
- Set the canvas width and height in characters to match where the art will go.
- Pick a brush character from the palette or type your own in the Brush box.
- Choose a tool — pen, line, rectangle, filled box, eraser or fill.
- Drag on the grid to draw; shape tools preview before you release.
- Copy the finished ASCII art from the output box or download it as a .txt file.
Examples
Block out a title or logo in characters to drop at the top of a project's README or a code comment.
Use the rectangle and line tools to build boxes, arrows and diagrams for a terminal or a text document.
Draw a small piece of text art for an email signature, forum post or chat where images aren't allowed.
Pour one character across an area with the fill tool, then carve details back out with the eraser.