Book Image

Draw and Paint Better with Krita

By : Wesley Gardner
Book Image

Draw and Paint Better with Krita

By: Wesley Gardner

Overview of this book

Krita is a free, open-source digital painting program with industry-leading functionality and a creative suite of tools able to bring any visual idea to life. It allows for a fast, clean approach to creating digital art, without the hassle of pay-to-play or subscription license fees, but just like all other art software, it takes time and effort to learn it. This book provides a comprehensive look into functional tools, visual problem-solving, and leading painting techniques using Krita to unleash your inner artist. You’ll learn the functionality and tools of Krita for creating digital and print-quality work as well as explore manipulation toolsets, custom brush creation, overviews of color spaces, and layer management. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with ‘key styles’ needed to make professional-grade digital art, through techniques such as photobashing, 3D paint-overs, and more traditional painting methods, along with covering how Krita handles these workflows. Next, you’ll work through a few step-by-step art pieces using the skills and tools learned throughout the book. By the end of this Krita book, you’ll have a solid understanding of the Krita work environment and be able to bring your artistic visions to life with a myriad of leading industry-standard techniques.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Intro to Krita and Digital Art Terminology Review
6
Part 2: Methods of Visual Communication within Krita
11
Part 3: Projects Unleashing Your Inner Artist with Krita

Chapter 3: Utilizing Layers and Layer Groups

Coming into this chapter, I bet you are ready to put your new knowledge and refreshed theory into action! That's great news, as in this chapter (and all chapters going forward), we will be doing some hands-on exercises to better understand the functionality of Krita as a program.

In this chapter, we will be dissecting one of Krita's foundational tools and some of the biggest boons that digital art provides you as a creator: layers, blending modes, and layer groups. In this chapter, we will be covering the following:

  • Defining layers, layer blending modes, and layer groups
  • Controlling a landscape painting composition using layers
  • Starting our landscape painting using our layer structure and Krita's built-in brushes
  • Grouping our landscape into layer groups for maximum efficiency
  • Refining our painting by utilizing some basic layer management skills to help us prepare for bringing this painting to a polished...