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krita

Krita is a free, open-source, and my current favourite software for digital art and animations.

brushes

On top of the default brushes, I also have sets from the following artists:

workflow

screenshot of Krita, showing my usual setup
setup

I think my typical Krita workflow is pretty simple. I always start with three layers:

  1. background: usually just a solid colour
  2. values: where I begin the sketch
  3. chroma: a layer set with color blending mode for when I want to add colour to the sketch

Depending on what I’m drawing, I could have additional layers. Usually when I’m "cleaning up" sketches, I’d do it on another layer just in case I want to change my mind later. Don’t rely on Undo as it can only go so far back in time.

The same thing happens when I want to draw an alternate version of what I already have on the canvas. In the image below, you can see how the original value layer looks different from the one on top of it (which is the version I went with in the end).

screenshot of Krita, showing a painting with a different version in the layer beneath
working with layers

colours

I usually source colours from photos, either by me or images I collected from the internet. For pixel art, I use this script to generate a handful of colours from an image:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
convert "$1" -geometry 8x8 -colors 16 -unique-colors -scale 4000% "$1-palette.png"

animations

animation workspace in Krita
animation

The workflow is the same for animations. Lots of layers, usually just one animated object per layer.

archiving

Depending on the art, Krita files can get quite large. If I consider a piece “done” (or “good enough”), I usually trim to image size in the image menu. This trims all layers, removing extra brush strokes or pixels outside of the image border.

I also go and clean up layers, merging the related and deleting the unused. I usually retain the original chroma–value–background trio just in case I decide to retouch the art in the future.

resources

Krita Artists
community forum
Tutorial: an Illustration from A to Z with Krita by David Revoy ()
excellent resource on not only an overview of some of Krita's features but digital painting process as well