Grid Artist: Draw by Squares
Turn photos into drawing grids
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Divide any photo into squares, fill the screen with one square at a time, and draw it. Works entirely offline.
Draw anything, one square at a time.
Grid Artist turns a reference photo into an accurate, step-by-step drawing guide using the grid method artists have relied on for centuries: divide the picture into squares, copy one square at a time, and the proportions take care of themselves.
HOW IT WORKS
1. Add a photo from your library, the camera, or Files.
2. Pick the paper you are drawing on. Your photo fills it — drag and pinch to choose what fits.
3. Set the grid, or let Grid Artist suggest a size from how much detail your photo actually has. It tells you what one square comes out as on that paper.
4. Tap Ready to Draw. The setup locks and the reference fills the screen.
5. Copy a square, tap it off, and move on. Export or print the gridded sheet whenever you like.
ONE CONTROL FOR THE WHOLE GRID
• A scale you drag, drawn as a ruler, instead of a page of settings
• Square: pick the size in millimetres and get squares that really are square, with part-cells at the edges the sheet cannot divide — exactly as when you rule one by hand
• Fit to paper: cells sized to divide the sheet exactly, edge to edge
• Either way both axes are worked out for you, so the cells cannot come out oblong by accident
• Colour, strength, and labels: none, numbers, A1 edges, or coordinates inside each square
• Centre crosshair, diagonals, rule of thirds and golden ratio guides
• Pinch to zoom and pan anywhere on the reference
CELL FOCUS — THE PART THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
One tap from the full-screen reference blows a single square up to fill the display, with a small overview map so you never lose your place. Mirror it, step back and forth, mark it finished — and Grid Artist moves you on. A colour-coded map shows how far you have come.
PREPARE THE REFERENCE
• Crop, rotate and flip, locked to your paper's aspect ratio
• Exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpen and blur
• Nine rendering styles: grayscale, high contrast, edge guide, line art, pencil sketch, simplify, threshold, invert and the original
• Paper sizes A3, A4, A5, Letter, Legal, square, photo sizes, or a custom size in millimetres
BUILT FOR DRAWING ON REAL PAPER
Tap Ready to Draw and the setup locks, so a stray touch cannot move the grid underneath you. The reference fills the screen edge to edge — prop the device beside your paper and tap each square off as you finish it. Rotate it to suit how the device is sitting, and hide the controls when you want only the picture.
SMART HELP, ENTIRELY ON YOUR DEVICE
• Suggested grid size, measured from the actual edge detail in your photo
• Crop to subject, using what the eye lands on first
• Line art that traces the outlines so you can copy shapes instead of shading
• Subject only, lifting your subject off its background
• Proportion guides for portraits: the eye line, nose and mouth
All of it runs on your iPhone or iPad, with no network needed.
EXPORT AND PRINT
• Reference with the grid, reference only, or a blank grid for your own paper
• A square-by-square PDF worksheet: one page per square, printed large and labelled
• PNG, JPEG and PDF, sized to the paper you picked
• AirPrint, AirDrop and the share sheet
PROJECTS
Every photo, grid, adjustment and finished square is saved as a project. Search them, sort them, duplicate one to try a different grid, and pick up exactly where you left off.
ICLOUD SYNC
Set a drawing up on your iPhone and it is waiting on your iPad — photo, paper, grid and the squares you have marked off. It uses your own iCloud account, and you can switch it off in Settings to keep everything on one device.
NO ACCOUNT. NO ADS. NO TRACKING.
Grid Artist has no sign-in, no subscription prompts and no analytics. The only thing it ever sends anywhere is your own work, to your own iCloud, and only if you leave sync on. Everything else — the grid, the styles, the on-device help — works with no network at all.
Made for anyone learning to draw, and for anyone who already can and just wants the measuring done for them.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Half of each neighbouring square, in Cell Focus. A line rarely starts and stops inside one square, so you can now see where it arrives and where it leaves. The square you are drawing stays outlined, and you can switch the neighbours off.
Guides inside the square. Divide the square you are on into halves, thirds or quarters, or draw its diagonals, when a shape is still too busy to copy by eye. They stay off until you ask for them, and they never touch the grid you ruled on paper.
Row and column references that stay put. Zoom into the full-screen reference and the letters and numbers move to the edges of the screen, over whichever squares you are looking at, so you never have to zoom out to find out where you are.
The developer, Raghava Naidu, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Raghava Naidu
- Size
- 16.6 MB
- Category
- Graphics & Design
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 18.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 2.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Raghava Naidu