# Getting started with canvas in JavaScript

Canvas is a special drawing field in the JavaScript browser. This field is created using the `<canvas>` tag, which should be given a width and height:

`<canvas width="200" height="200"></canvas>`

To work with this field in JavaScript, first we get a reference to this tag into some variable:

`let canvas = document.querySelector('canvas');`

Then the `getContext` method must be applied to this variable:

`let canvas = document.querySelector('canvas'); let ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');`

It can be simplified:

`let ctx = document.querySelector('canvas').getContext('2d');`

As a result, an object containing the so-called drawing context will be written to the `ctx` variable. All drawing will be done using the methods of this object. We will study them in the next lessons.

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