Meet Pixel Sprite!

Hi to all! Today we have for you a new interview, this time we have stolen some time to our artist Pixel Sprite, one of the artists that has participated in the designs for our cool stuff in the shop . Enjoy it and have a nice Monday!

Hi Pixel Sprite 🙂
Do you paint professionally or as a hobby artist?
I’m a hobby artist.

When and how did you end up trying digital painting for the first time?
It was years ago but I can’t really remember. Circumstantial evidence says late ’07. As for how, I think it was that I read about GIMP on a ‘cool free programs’ list and it snowballed from there.

What is it that makes you choose digital over the traditional painting? or Do you still prefer traditional means, if so, why?
I have a dislike of unnecessarily wasting things, like art supplies. Wearing down pencils and using up paper. Using up disk space or just not saving things that aren’t turning out nicely is far more comfortable to me. I’d still like to be good with some traditional media at some point.

How did you first find out about open source communities? What is your opinion about them?
The first open-source community I was really aware of was Blender’s, back in the time of 2.48. I generally find them to be very helpful even without directly interacting with them.

Have you worked for any FOSS project or contributed in some way?
So far I’ve only been testing and commenting on the Windows version of Krita.

How did you find out about Krita?
I found out about Krita while occasionally checking David Revoy’s blog.

What was your first take on it?
First time reading about Krita: “I think I want to like this program.” (That was before Krita was usable on Windows.)
First time using Krita: “So many brushes! So many brush settings that I don’t know what they do!”

What do you love about Krita?
That it’s the best all-around open-source graphics program and that it makes me want to get better at painting so I can use it better.

What do you think needs improvement in Krita? Also, anything that you really hate?
I think Krita is awesome as-is and I’ll cheer for any further improvement. That said, I can’t tell you how excited I am for the animation GSoC project! I really hope that gets to be in a usable form. As for hate, it’s not so much hate as that I get sad when something breaks. Krita, at least when it comes to Windows, seems to like keeping its developers on their toes.

In your opinion, what sets Krita apart from the other tools that you use?
It has image manipulation capacities, unlike MyPaint, which is great for small (and not-so-small) fixes and it is far more fun to paint with than GIMP. Krita also starts with a ‘K’; the advantage of this should be obvious. That or I’m biased.

If you had to pick one favourite of all your work done in Krita so far, what would it be?
That would have to be the picture I did in celebration of Mega Man being announced as a character in the next Super Smash Bros. game.

What is it that you like about it? What brushes did you use in it?
I like that it came out as well as it did. It showed me what I could do if I sat down and really put my mind (and time) into a piece. For brushes I mainly used Basic_paint_05 and Basic_paint_25 set to build up mode along with a thin oval brush that had its rotation set to the drawing angle.

If you want to know more about him don’t forget to visit his DeviantArt!

Interview with César Tellez!

Here we are again with more interviews for you! This time we have for you a conversation with César Tellez, he is Mexican and he has been a member of our artist community for a long time and now he has collaborated with us! His artwork will appear in the new coming products of our shop. Thanks to him and enjoy the interview!

Hi César,
Do you paint professionally or as a hobby artist?
Together with some friends, we have just started making digital art professionally. And we’ve been doing comics as a hobby.

When did you start with digital painting?
About 4 years ago, when I started to be a regular user of Kubuntu. In those days I bought my first graphic tablet and I started to search for tools for working with digital art in Linux based systems.

How was your first take on it?
Well, I was used to use the programs of that famous company that makes proprietary graphics software. My first attempt was with GIMP, and getting used to it wasn’t hard. Maybe it was a little irritating to work with all the separate windows, but bit by bit I got used to ti.  Eventually I discovered MyPaint, and that was a lot easier for me in a lot of ways.

Would you prefer digital painting or traditional?
I still prefer traditional painting and if the modern publishing industry would make it possible, I would exclusively work in the traditional way. But  it is more practical,  more productive to paint digitally. Anyway,  you can obtain the same effects with both methods, so it will always depend on the circumstances of each job and on the artist in particular.

How did you get in Open Source Communities?
It was almost at the same time that I started to use free software all the time, as immediately I started to find compatibility problems, system collapses and all those lovely issues. So I understood the need to be in contact with other users via forums and blogs almost immediately.

What do you think about Open Source communities?
There are all kinds of members, as it occurs in all the communities on line, but i have always been fortunate to find very kind and cooperative people.

Did you contribute to any FOSS project?
No, this will be the first time and I do it with pleasure

How did you find Krita?
At the moment of experimenting with open source apps. I tried Krita since the version 1.6.3, which wasn’t usable for me, but even back then, it seemed a promising program.

How was your first take on it?
Well. 1.6.3 and 2.0 gave me huge headaches, for the slowness, crashes and the limited file format support. It was difficult, but when 2.3  was released it turned almost overnight into my favorite tool.

What is the thing you like the most about Krita?
In the first place, that is a very flexible program, its configurability makes it very convenient to adapt to the type of technique or result wanted. Then its variety of brushes is very useful, as is the fact that each painting engine has a lot of configuration options.
It is  also what I call a “direct” app: it has filters, selections and other features that are there and can be used for photo editing or general treatment of the image, but don’t disturb the work for drawing, they are there but don’t  impede the concentration when painting.

What do you think needs improvement in Krita?
Maybe its resource consumption, it’s the only thing that doesn’t allows the position of Krita in the most popular digital art apps, apart there is that limitations of using a based in Linux system or the uncomfortable thing of a dual-boot

Something you hate?
Not really, except for the sudden closures of the app, but this occurs almost only in the test versions.

In your opinion, what sets Krita apart from the other tools that you use?
Together with MyPaint, it comes closest to painting on a normal sheet of paper, it’s very comfortable with regard to its painting tools, but there are also these little options that you can find in photo editing programs that sometimes you need for working.

What brushes did you use?
I did the sketch in a paper sheet and then scanned it. The coloring process was done with pixel brushes with the maximum opacity, to make easier the application of color (task that regularly I start for solid colors with the fill tool). For the lights and shadows i used the blur brush, sometimes with textures, that, i have to say, that is a very interesting tool that Krita offers.

Thank you so much for this interview César, has been a pleasure 🙂

Hope you all enjoyed it!

 

Expressive painting with Hairy presets

Hi!

Ramon Miranda here! Let’s talk about Krita brush sets. The default set is big, not huge… But certainly big enough so you can get lost easily if you don’t spend a lot of time investigating. But if you dig deep enough, and explore the huge number of options, you’ll find some real gems. So lets see what i have discovered about one type of brushes: the hairy brushes.

The Default Hairy Brush Set:

After a some thorough and productive testing time, I got to a point where I managed to get a predictable and stable performance out of the hairy brushes. the hairy brushes can be very fast when you tweak some values, and that makes them more interesting.

The current set is a very good starting point but I felt I could improve on it. Read on for what I did – and a sneak preview of the Muses Painting with Krita DVD (which is getting very close now!)

 

The Muses Hairy Brush Set:

For starters:
Let’s change the painting mode from Wash to Build-up and link the opacity to the pressure curve sensor. Now we’ve got something that quite useful for expressive painting, but not for a realistic style.
Let’s also improve the icons we use a bit. Check out http://community.kde.org/Krita/Brushes_Preset_Preview for ongoing to work to coordinate the icons for Krita preset packs!

Next: advanced options:

• Anti-aliasing: I haven´t seen a significant negative impact on performance and the quality improves a bit at 100% zoom level, so I’ve turned this on for all brushes.

• Most of them use Bristle options/Mouse Pressure. This parameter uses the speed of the brushtroke to increase the size. I found it interesting, because we can make more detailed things as we paint slower.

• All of them use a bit of Shear parameter to avoid the “superstraight” effect on bristles

• Also some of these new presets use the Ascension with a not common ramp. This ramp is useful to constrain the amount of degrees you can rotate your hand before the brush start to rotate and covers the Left and Right rotation. You only have to modify the corners points to make this behavior more sensitive.

Contents of the Hairy Brush Pack

Contents:There are 6 presets that can be clearly identified. I designed them to be usable not just with a tablet, but also with a mouse – and still keep most of the appearance of a brushtroke. The description is for generic use, don’t limit yourself!

Hairy_Details: An easy to use detailing brush. You can see how the size changes if you go faster. Combined with different pressures and speed you get a lot of variety in your brushtrokes. Great to create edges and little details with slow speed.

Hairy_Large: To make backgrounds and cover large areas. It uses “ascension” to make it more versatile.

Hairy_Special_Blender: Not a common blender! It “paints”, but only with the color that is below the direct contact point of the stylus: it smears that color around using the opacity controlled by pressure. Sounds weird? Just give it a try!
The hairy special blender uses the “ascension” feature to make it more random and versatile. As you change the wrist angle we change the “grainy” direction so we can create “rare” patterns if we want. You’ll need a tablet that support tilt to experience the feature, of course.
If you apply low pressure, you’ll achieve a really nice kind of blending with a nice, soft grainy effect.

Hairy_Squared: This is a Squared Type brush. It can be use as a generic brush for mid size areas. And with not too much effects on parameters to make it controllable with a good predictable result like a classical bristle brush.

Hairy_Tapered: Creates a tapered brushtroke. You’ll get the best results if you combine pressure with a fast, “gestured” stroke. Moving slowly makes it usable for details, like edges. Low pressure but fast movement is useful to cover mid size areas like a glazing with semi translucent brushtrokes.

Hairy_Texture: Creates a textured look – a bit like a sponge. The user can control this effect with bristle options/random offset. Be careful with this value. Bigger values can decrease performance – but still fun to experiment with.
You can modify the Density parameter on the Brush nib to make the “spider-web” look less visible. The “density” controls the amount of the brush visible parts. Another tweak: you can vary the “density” bar on the bristle options/density

How to install:

Download

The brushkit ZIP can be downloaded here.
The brush set is compatible with Krita 2.7 and the current 2.8 development branch.

License :  the brushkit itself and thumbnails is released under the WTFPL 2.0  ( compatible Public Domain and CC-0 ).

Install

Unzip the downloaded zip , and paste the files into your Krita user preference directory. On Linux, the Krita preferences are located here :  /home//.kde/share/apps/krita/paintoppresets

Muses: Painting with Krita DVD

Special pre-order price including shipping and V.A.T: €27.50

In conversation with Elena

Hello readers, today we are sharing a short interview with Elena, from Italy, who is a Computer Engineer by profession and a painter by hobby. She is learning anatomy at present and she is loaded with an amazing spirit to learn more. She is also collaborating with us for the Krita Shop on zazzle. Click on “read more” to read the entire conversation with this amazing budding artist!

Hi Elena, Would you like to tell us something about yourself?
I’m not very good at painting, I’m learning anatomy but I prefer to publish only simple things since half good/half bad anatomy falls easily in the uncanny valley
That sounds great. We look forward to you sharing those works!

Now, how would you define the importance of painting in your daily life?
Painting is a big part of my life but is only a hobby, a “serious” hobby in the last 2 years.

When and how did you end up trying digital painting for the first time?
I was a preschooler and my father was kind enough to let me use his computer, a commodore 64 if I remember correctly.

What is it that makes you choose digital over traditional painting?
It’s cheaper and less time consuming.

Short yet very precise! So, how did you first find out about open source communities? What is your opinion about them?
During the first year of university we used FreeBSD, the next year I began to use Ubuntu and frequent the Italian forum. My opinion about them is generally positive.

Have you worked for any FOSS project or contributed in some way?
I only did this brush set for MyPaint. http://browse.deviantart.com/art/Brushes-for-mypaint-281981370

How did you find out about Krita?
I watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLPZDVdQiQ .

What was your first take on it?
After buying a new graphic tablet I decided to try it, unfortunately working with Krita was too much for my old laptop.

 What do you love about Krita?
It’s the right tool for what I want to do; the interface is functional and not distracting.

What do you think needs improvement in Krita? Also, anything that you hate?
Hate is such a strong word… Sometimes it’s slow with big images and/or big brushes.

In your opinion, what sets Krita apart from the other tools that you use?
I mainly use Mypaint, I spend a big portion of my free time doodling with the pencil brushes but when I have a specific idea I prefer Krita; I make a lot of errors, making corrections in Krita is faster and for a final touch I love the color smudge brush with the smearing option. *_* I have never seen something similar in others open source programs.

If you had to pick one favorite of all your work done in Krita so far, what would it be? What brushes did you use?           
OK, I said “hate is a strong word” but I hate all of my works. XD I still don’t have the technical skills to draw exactly what I want. Maybe I don’t know what I really want to draw, maybe I shall always been unsatisfied. And that’s good. 🙂 I want to improve myself and be a better artist.
I don’t have a favorite, above is the last work done with Krita. I used a lot of brushes for this, I still can’t choose what is better for my paintings.

I appreciate your spirit Elena!
It was a pleasure interviewing you. Hope you enjoyed this talk as much as I did! 🙂

Thank you for this opportunity, and for your work. Even if art is only a hobby for me, after a day of working, it makes me happy to take some time and draw; some days a pencil is enough, sometimes I need something more. So… Thank you, again. 🙂

Pleasure is all ours. Hope Krita continues to be your friend while learning and later. 🙂

You can check out more of her artworks on deviant here.

New poster!

Hi to all!

Here is our new poster with the colaboration of Namito111!

There are some questions that we made to him:

– A part from painting in Krita, do you contribute into some open-sources project ?
Except some posts on KDE forum, I’m just an user so far. However I’m considering to contribute as a translator or a tester in the future.

– Do you work in the ambit of design, illustration…?
No, I paint as a weekend hobby.

– What brushes did you use to do that image?
I used 3 brushes on it:
1. Pencil-esque Pixel brush for the lineart.
2. Fully opaque Pixel brush for defining areas to color prior to the actual coloring process.
3. Color Smudge brush for the ‘uneven’ texture of watercolor paint. The Smudge mode is set to Dulling.

– How did you discovered Krita?
I discovered it while exploring image editing softwares available on Ubuntu Linux in early 2012. At that time I was migrating from Windows to Linux to use GIMP at the full speed.

– What is your favourite feature of Krita?
I love the seamless zoom/pan/rotate view interface and the quick access palette. They really boost my efficiency.

Thanks to Namito111! You can see more of his work on deviant.

It will be on Zazzle soon!

Welcome to the Krita Webshop Blog!

Hi to all!

Krita is a digital painting and illustration open-source program based on KDE Platform and Calligra Suite libraries. It was released for the first time as a part of KOffice on June 21, 2005.

Now, we are improving our web shop and offering more merchandise, the money will be used for the livelihood of Krita and its growth.

The question is, why are we creating a blog? The images used in Krita’s merchandise are created by our users. Krita’s design emphasizes creating artwork, for this reason we will show you in this blog how the artists create the image, what brushes did they use to do the image… We will bring you closer to the artists and show you all the possibilities that Krita has for you!

Welcome to the artists place!