Paint online, free

A free online paint tool set up for painting: a big soft brush on warm peach paper, with crayon texture and translucent markers to layer colour. No download, no signup.

Online paint

Draw Anything Studio Free online canvas — no download, no account
Tools
Size 26px
Colour
Paper
Draw something. Click and drag — or use your finger. Nothing to install.
Your drawing saves automatically in this browser. Want layers, photo tracing, more brushes and a canvas in your pocket? Get the free app →

Painting, not just drawing

Painting is about areas of colour rather than lines. This canvas opens with a 26px brush and a red loaded, on peach paper — a warm mid-tone that makes both light and dark colours stand out and stops the dreaded blank white page.

The brush responds to speed: slow strokes are full and round, fast flicks taper off. Use that to make edges soft or sharp. The crayon adds dry, broken texture on top, and the marker is translucent, so it glazes one colour over another.

A simple painting process

  1. Big shapes in flat colourWith a large brush, block in the main areas — sky, ground, the subject — with no detail at all.
  2. DarksAdd the shadow side of each shape in a darker colour. Keep it simple: one darker shade per area.
  3. LightsAdd the lit side and highlights. White on peach paper is very effective.
  4. TextureSwitch to the crayon for grass, bark, fur or clouds.
  5. GlazeUse the marker over areas to shift their colour — a blue marker over the shadows makes them cooler and deeper.

Colours that work together

A limited palette almost always looks better than every colour at once. Try three colours plus black and white — for example red, yellow and blue, or orange, cyan and purple. The colour theory guide explains complementary and analogous schemes in a few minutes, and the digital painting guide walks through a full painting step by step.

Painting on your phone

This canvas works with a finger on any phone, but the Draw Anything app gives you the whole screen, a much larger brush library and unlimited colours with a hex and HSV picker.

Questions

Is this a free alternative to Microsoft Paint?

It’s a free paint tool that runs in any browser, including on Mac, Chromebook, iPad and Android. It focuses on painting and drawing with natural-feeling brushes rather than shapes and selections.

Can I change the canvas colour after I start?

Yes. The Paper swatches change the background at any time without affecting what you have painted.

How do I blend colours?

Use the marker: its strokes are translucent, so a yellow marker over blue gives green. Several light passes blend more smoothly than one heavy one.

Can I save my painting?

Use Save PNG to download it. It also autosaves in this browser.

Draw Anything: Paint Canvas app icon

Take the canvas with you

The browser studio is a taste. The app is the full art creation studio — layers, a big brush library, photo tracing, infinite colour, a new drawing idea every day, home screen widgets and timelapse sharing, on every device you own.

What you get

  • Price Free to download, with an optional PRO subscription
  • Includes Layers, pen, pencil, marker, crayon, watercolour, fountain pen and fill tools, daily ideas, widgets, timelapse sharing
  • PRO unlocks Rainbow Pencil, Import Images, Infinite Colour, Gravity Lines
  • Platforms iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android
  • Age rating 4+
  • Languages English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese