Hello everyone! Today i'm going to be doing
a tutorial all about drawing in Krita. Krita is a completely free drawing software that
is just as good as any other paid painting program - like Paint Tool SAI or Photoshop.
It has a lot of the same kind of features, I think it's amazing, especially if you're
a beginner and you don't want to spend a lot of money on a digital art program, Krita is
an amazing option. So the first thing you're going to do when you open up the program is
click on new file to make your canvas. Next under the dimensions tab you can change how
big you want your canvas to be, so i like to do around 2000 to 3000 pixels. Right now
it's 2000 by 2000 which means it is going to be a completely square canvas. As for how
many pixels you should do, I would say it entirely depends on how good your computer
is and how much it can handle. So if you know that you've got a really good PC and it can
handle a really big canvas size, definitely go for it. Moving on to resolution, it is
actually recommended that you use a resolution of 300 pixels per inch. I'm gonna use 150ppi
because my laptop's been really laggy lately, so i'm just gonna keep it relatively low.
If you want a really high quality image then i would definitely go for 300ppi. Then under
the content tab you can change the name of it, how many layers you want your canvas to
open up with - so i would like it to open up with three. And then you can change your
background colour! I think by default it is white, I like to change it to more of a mid-tone
because that helps me later on when i'm picking colours. So that is all the dimensions sorted,
and then under colour you might want to change the colour model from RGB to CMYK if you're
going to be printing out your drawing. Because i know that I just want this to be a digital
piece, i'm just going to stick to RGB. Then we're going to click create to make the canvas.
Before i even get started drawing anything, I'm going to troubleshoot some common issues
that you may run into when you're using Krita for the first time. So the biggest thing that
you may encounter is brush lag -the best way around this is to go into settings>configure
Krita click on display and under canvas graphics acceleration change it from OpenGL to Direct3d
via Angle. It depends on what graphics drivers you have sometimes OpenGL causes issues and
makes it laggy, so that's one option you can use to try and reduce your lag. Another thing
you can do is change your scaling mode from high quality filtering to trilinear filtering,
I've heard that also helps with lag. And finally, if you're having really bad lag you can change
your canvas size and make it a lower canvas size, because it could just be the factor
of your computer can't handle the canvas size. Also you might have like 20 layers and it
might be struggling with the amount of layers you have, so those are just some common things
you may run into that will cause you Krita lag. And then another issue you might encounter
is if you're going from Krita 3 to Krita 4 I literally just updated my Krita, and then
i was freaking out because i realised loads of my favourite brushes were missing. What
you need to do if that is the case is go in to Settings>Manage Resources and this is what
you will see. You'll see Krita 3 default resources is under inactive bundles, so just move that
across into active bundles and then you'll have all of your old brushes back, as well
as some of the new ones that came with Krita 4! So next thing i'm gonna do is just do a
really quick scribble on the canvas, just to demonstrate canvas navigation and some
shortcuts to you guys. So if you would like to mirror your canvas all you need to do is
click [m] on your keyboard and that will mirror the whole canvas. And if you're wondering
why you would need to mirror your canvas - if you're making a digital painting and you want
to check your proportions, sometimes you can get a little bit too used to looking at it
and if you flip it around and mirror image it, it will be easier to see where you've
made mistakes (because you're not used to seeing it mirrored) so that is really useful
while you're painting. Next shortcut that you might need to know is rotation - so you
need to click [4] if you want to rotate this way and [6] if you want to rotate the other
way. If you would like more control while rotating you can hold down [shift] and [space]
and drag (your mouse) and that will give you way more control, rather than rotating to
just fixed points. So that's how you can rotate like that, and then if you want to reset the
rotation back to zero, all you have to do is click the '5' key. Next if you want to
zoom in all you have to do is use the [+] and [-] keys. If you click [1] it will reset
the zoom if you click [2] it will fit the zoom to the page and if you click [3] it will
zoom your canvas to the page width. If you have a brush and you'd like to resize it,
you can either just drag up here, or while you've got the brush on the canvas you can
hold down [shift] and drag (your mouse) and that way you're able to resize the brush really
easily. That's the way i like to resize my brushes. And the next tip is really helpful
if you like to do digital painting like me, so say I use a red colour over here and then
I start using a slightly lighter red here, and then i want to colour pick that original
red i used again, all you have to do is hold down the [ctrl] button and press down, and
then you've colour picked that colour! So now that we're done with all that, I'm going
to go through some of my favourite brushes in Krita. I know that when you first open
Krita, it can be incredibly daunting - there's all these menus and it is quite overwhelming.
And i know the very first time I ever tried making a painting in Krita, I found it really
hard to get my head around it and i had no idea what brushes I even liked - so one of
the best things you can do is just experiment with loads of different brushes, and find
out which ones you like! I'm gonna go through the ones that i like right now. So if you
click here on this button, you can create a tag. And i created a tag just called 'favourites'
so you can literally type in anything you want. And then you can make a tag. Then once you've
created a tag, you can right click on the brush you like and click 'assign to tag'.
And i already have a favourites tag here, and basically what I've done is I've put all
of my favourite brushes into my favourites tag. This is another thing that I wish I knew
about earlier because it would have saved me so much time, because when you're just
looking in the regular brush menu it's really hard to keep track of which brushes you like
and where to find them. So the very first brush that i like to use is this 'airbrush
pressure' brush. This is one that i really like to use for sketching and stuff like that.
The next brush that I really like to use is this brush here, and this brush is called
'bristles hairy'. I tend to use this brush while i'm painting.
The next brush that i like to use is 'ink brush 25' this is a really good brush if you're
someone who likes to do a lot of line art. I just find it works really well for line
art kind of stuff. And a good thing to do if you are planning to use this brush for
line art is to turn on the stabiliser, because that will help you get a much smoother line,
and as you can see it kind of lags behind my brush a little bit but that way i get a
really nice smooth line. And you can change the distance and the delay to whatever suits
you best, and if you want to turn it back off again just select 'none' on brush smoothing.
The next brush is the 'layout block', I wouldn't say I use it that much, but I do like to use
it from time to time in backgrounds and sometimes sketching. The next brush that I like to use
is called 'pencil texture' and it literally does what it says on the tin! It's just this
really nice textured brush, I really like to use this for backgrounds just to add a
bit of texture to my paintings. The final brush that i really like to use is called
'pencil tilt' - also any brush you see that has this little 'T' here means that it supports
tilt. And i really really like to use this brush for sketching because I find it reminds
me so much of an actual pencil! And there we have all of my favourite brushes
that I've just found that i really like through about four years of using Krita! It took a
while for me to find my favourite brushes, but now that I know what works for me I just
like to have them in the little favourites folder, and then I know I can use any of these
for the different stages of the painting. So i would say try these out, see if they
work for you, if they don't work for you then find brushes in the selection that do work
for you! And you can always download more brushes for Krita if you don't like any of
the default ones. Okay so now I can get into the really fun stuff, which is how i actually
create my drawings in Krita! So the first step is to start with a really rough sketch,
don't worry at all about it being messy at this stage. It's actually good for it to be
messy - just be as sketchy and loose as possible, this stage is literally just to get the basic
ideas and anatomy down so don't worry too much about it. I use the airbrush tool for
this part of the sketching process, because it's just a very soft easy to build brush,
and I find it works best for this kind of sketching. Once I've finished my really rough
messy sketch, I then turn down the opacity of that layer and create a layer above to
make a more refined sketch over the top. This is basically a way more detailed sketch but
it still isn't completely perfect, it's just a lot more refined and detailed, and less
messy than the one before. I never really do line art because i know i'm gonna end up
painting everything, so I (at this point) just leave it at this refined sketch. But
if you really want to, you could turn down the opacity of this one and make an even more
refined sketch on top of it too (if you want to have more of a line art kind of look).
Now that all of the rough lines are in place, I start blocking in all of the flat colours
on a layer underneath. This is a really fun stage because it's literally just colouring,
all you have to do is put the correct colours in the correct places and you can kind of
experiment around with different colours. For example, I was gonna give her pink hair
but because she's laying on the grass I thought it would be nice for her to have a reddish-ginger
hair because i knew it would complement well with the green of the grass. Now that you've
got all your lines and all your colours, the next step is to add some shading. So I use
multiply layer modes on layers above to build up the shadows, and then I use the luminosity
function to build up any highlights on layers above. To build up these shadows and highlights,
I'm still using the airbrush tool. I also make use of clipping layers, and the only
way you can use clipping layers is by creating a group first and then creating a layer above
the layer that you want to clip to, and then selecting the little... it's like an a symbol
or like an infinity symbol, and you just click on that little symbol and then you can create
a clipping mask. Which is really great because then you won't draw outside of that defined
boundary, it will keep it stuck to that layer. Once I'm happy with all the colours, shadows
and highlights, I use [ctrl]+[e] to merge all of the layers together, and then I start
blending it all together. And i'm going to do a really quick demonstration on screen
now on how i actually blend things. So i use the 'bristles hairy' brush for any kind of
painting that I do, and if i'm painting something like hair or something really detailed I'll
leave the pressure sensitivity on, but if you want to paint something like skin or any
area that's going to be really blended, then you should probably turn off the SIZE pressure
opacity control - that way you're only drawing on one size. And the only thing that your
pen pressure controls is the opacity of the brush because that will help with your blending.
And when i blend it's basically a combination of how hard i'm pressing my tablet pen to
my tablet, and also colour picking. Colour picking is so important in the blending process
so make sure you keep pressing down [ctrl] to colour pick, or if you have a tablet pen
that's like mine that has little buttons on the side that you can configure to be certain
shortcuts - I have one that's automatically set to [ctrl] so it will colour pick every
single time I click that button on my pen. And I colour pick the colours in between the
two colours I want to blend together and sort of just use a varying opacity to make sure
I can blend everything in. Hopefully I've explained that well enough, it's really difficult
to explain, but that's the process that I use for any kind of blending. Now that I've
gone through all the specific steps I take when painting, for the remainder of the speed
paint i'm going to share some more general tips with you guys. Before even starting a
digital painting, it helps to plan exactly what you want to draw. So I recommend creating
really sketchy thumbnails where you can experiment with different lighting setups and compositions,
and then once you've made a few of those you can choose between them to find out which
one works the best. I actually didn't do this step with this painting so i feel like it
probably would have turned out even better had I done that initial experimentation and
planning. Also as i mentioned earlier you'll notice i mirror the canvas a lot while i'm
painting - this is really important as it allows me to check my proportions. When i
first started digital art at age 12, I had no idea that this was important and as a result
I would create a lot of paintings where the face was angled weirdly or the proportions
were off, so make sure you're continuously clicking that [m] key throughout your painting
process just to check all the proportions are okay when you've mirrored it. It also
takes quite a long time to make a painting like this, I definitely wouldn't recommend
doing it all in one sitting. It took me around eight hours to complete this painting and
I spread that out over several days. Taking a step back or taking a break allows you to
not only rest, but also come back to your painting later with a fresh perspective. Sometimes
it will even look entirely different. Think about it - you're staring at your painting
for a long period of time, so your eyes will get used to it. Breaks are also really important
for your mental health, it's really easy to get overwhelmed or burnt out when painting
for long periods of time. So make sure you take a break to get some fresh air, drink
some water or have a snack and then you can come back to your painting later when you're
feeling completely refreshed. I really hope you guys found this tutorial helpful! If you
have any questions please don't hesitate to leave them down below and I will do my best
to answer them for you. Please subscribe for more digital art tutorials and speed paints,
and let me know what videos you'd like to see from me in the future! -Subtitles by Jenna. Thanks for watching
my video!
