Blender Grease Pencil Canvas Grids and Drawing Planes

This guide explains how to configure Grease Pencil canvas grids and drawing planes in Blender to accurately position 2D strokes within a 3D environment. You will learn how to enable and customize the canvas visual overlay, select the appropriate drawing orientation planes, and combine stroke placement settings with the 3D Cursor to draw from any angle in 3D space.

Selecting Drawing Planes

Blender uses drawing planes to determine the orientation of your 2D strokes in 3D space. When you enter Draw Mode on a Grease Pencil object, you can select your active drawing plane from the top viewport header:

  • Front (X-Z): Projects strokes along the front orthographic plane.
  • Side (Y-Z): Projects strokes along the side orthographic plane.
  • Top (X-Y): Projects strokes along the flat ground plane.
  • View: Aligns the drawing plane directly perpendicular to your current viewport camera angle.
  • Cursor: Aligns the drawing plane to the current rotation and location of the 3D Cursor.

Enabling and Customizing the Canvas Grid

The visual canvas grid provides a reference plane while sketching in 3D space.

  1. Open the Viewport Overlays popover menu in the top-right corner of the 3D Viewport.
  2. Check the box next to Canvas to make the grid visible.
  3. Expand the Canvas section to adjust the following settings:
    • Color & Opacity: Change the grid line color and transparency for better contrast against your scene background.
    • Grid Subdivisions: Set the density of the internal grid lines.
    • Scale: Adjust the overall size of the canvas grid plane.
    • Offset: Shift the visual grid along the X and Y axes of the current plane.

Setting Stroke Placement Modes

Stroke placement dictates where in 3D depth your strokes are anchored:

  • Origin: Draws strokes on the plane passing through the Grease Pencil object's origin point.
  • 3D Cursor: Draws strokes on the plane passing through the 3D Cursor's current location.
  • Surface: Snaps strokes directly onto the geometry of other 3D meshes in the scene.
  • Stroke: Snaps new strokes directly onto existing Grease Pencil strokes.

Positioning Planes with the 3D Cursor

To draw on arbitrary angles in 3D space:

  1. Set the Stroke Placement to 3D Cursor.
  2. Set the Drawing Plane to Cursor.
  3. Position the 3D Cursor using Shift + Right-Click or the 3D Cursor tool on the left toolbar.
  4. Rotate the 3D Cursor in the Sidebar (N) > View > 3D Cursor panel to define custom drawing angles. The canvas grid will automatically reorient to match the cursor.