Master the art of digital painting with the help of this full-color guide by learning how to implement blending layers, as well as use brushes, color wheels, and techniques using the power of the free tools provided by Krita
Key Features
• Unlock the powerful tools offered by Krita to create customizable UIs
• Discover useful tips, tricks, and hacks to build compelling designs and speed up your digital workflow
• Learn how to use the brush tool and manage colors to create beautiful artwork
Book Description
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.
What you will learn
• Use layers, layer management, and layer blending modes to make images pop
• Understand Krita's default workspace and customize it
• Understand the terminology of digital visual communication (dots per inch, resolution, and more)
• Explore color in a digital space, such as RGB profiles and Look-Up-Tables (LUTS)
• Discover the color wheel for painting and learn how digital color (light and alpha channels) works as opposed to traditional painting materials
• Focus on proper layer management for easy, non-destructive manipulation of art pieces quickly
Who this book is for
If you're an artist wanting to take your artwork and portfolio to a professional level, then this book is for you. You'll need some experience using art creation software (ideally Krita, Photoshop, or Clip Studio Paint) before you jump in, but beginners willing to use external sources to keep up will find plenty of useful information. Artists looking to upgrade their skills for work in the entertainment industry will benefit the most from this digital art book.
Author(s): Wesley Gardner
Edition: 1
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: Vector PDF
Pages: 426
City: Birmingham, UK
Tags: Art Studies; Sketching; Painting; Krita
Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 1: Intro to Krita and Digital Art Terminology Review
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Krita
Technical requirements
Recommending hardware – tablets and upgrades
The graphic drawing tablet
The graphic drawing monitor/pen display
Upgrading your computer
What is Krita, and what makes it different?
Installing Krita
System requirements
A step-by-step example (for Windows)
Breaking down the Krita UI
The file menu and toolbar
The workspace
The pop-up palette
Customizing your workspace
Configuring the toolbars
Configuring Krita (advanced)
Summary
Chapter 2: Reviewing Canvas Properties and Color
Technical requirements
Breaking down resolution, aspect ratios, canvases, and DPI/PPI
Print versus digital resolution (PPI) settings
Landscape versus portrait versus freeform
Evaluating color modes
RGB, RYB, CMYK, and bit depth
Going from RGBA to CMYK – digital to print
Recommending canvas sizes and settings
Understanding basic color theory
Breaking down a color
The three questions
Clarifying the color wheel
Dissecting a color
Color relationships
Warm versus cool colors
Limited palettes
Learning color fast
Summary
Chapter 3: Utilizing Layers and Layer Groups
Technical requirements
Understanding layers – the secret weapon of digital art
Layers
Blending modes
Layer groups
Controlling your landscape composition with layers
Starting our painting
Grouping our layers
Refining our painting
Summary
Chapter 4: Utilizing Brushes and Tools
Technical requirements
Exploring brushes
Discovering brush presets
Modifying Brush Presets display options
Categorizing with tags
Creating a custom tag
Filling our custom tag
Customizing your brushes
Brush Editor
Saving your custom brush preset
Creating your own brush
Exporting our resources
Importing a resource bundle
Summary
Part 2: Methods of Visual Communication within Krita
Chapter 5: Implementing Layer Blending Modes
Technical requirements
Understanding layer modes
Browsing our layer blending mode choices
Setting up a value checker
Evaluating reference material
Destigmatizing reference in art
Using stock assets and references – legality
Discovering resources online
Finding the right reference
Choosing our reference
Bashing our reference
Splashing in color
Summary
Chapter 6: Composing Using Krita's Toolbox
Technical requirements
Masking our layers
Transparency Mask
Filter Mask
Colorize Mask
Transform Mask
Blending our photo information
Adding edges with selection tools
Defining the tools
Creating edges
Navigating perspective
Refining our brushwork
Summary
Chapter 7: Changing the Feel with Painting, Values, and Sliders
Technical requirements
Adjusting your color balance
Preparing our painting for color balance
Painting using our new adjustments
Controlling mood
Choosing color gamuts
Utilizing a mother color
Modifying brightness and contrast
Finding the right tool
Summary
Chapter 8: Controlling Chaos – Organizing Your Workflow
Technical requirements
Organizing with shape language
Cleaning up our layers
Simplifying it down to three (again)
Retaining clarity through structure
Taking notes
Summary
Part 3: Projects Unleashing Your Inner Artist with Krita
Chapter 9: Setting Up a Still-Life Study
Technical requirements
Setting expectations
Discussing our reference
Setting up grids and guides
Creating our canvas
Applying our grid settings
Transferring what you see
Tracing isn't cheating
Landmarking your shapes
Summary
Chapter 10: Enforcing Fundamentals
Technical requirements
Working within our framework
Setting creative limitations
Adjusting the levels
Blocking in values using color
Laying in your initial colors
Finishing touches with edge control
Discussing edge types
Rendering and pushing to the final piece
Glazing
Adding final details
Smudging our paint for the finish
Summary
Chapter 11: Working with Concept Art
Technical requirements
Defining concept art
Contextualizing concepts
Making a list, checking it twice
Understanding perspective
One-point perspective
Two-point perspective
Three-point perspective
Making your choice – linear versus curvilinear
Utilizing composition tricks
Defining art rules
The Rule of Thirds
The Golden Ratio
Comparing the two methods
Keeping things loose
Summary
Chapter 12: Refining and Creating Cinematic Concept Art
Technical requirements
Creating two thumbnails for comparison
Deciding on our options
Preparing our first canvas
Preparing our second canvas
Starting our portrait-oriented thumbnail
Splashing in colors
Starting on our second thumbnail
Choosing our strongest composition
Refining our idea
Learning industry-standard paint-over techniques
Applying our photo textures
Improving our design sense
Rendering
Applying finishing touches and post-processing
Creating our light bloom
Adjusting colors
Running a sharpening filter
Adding a noise filter
Summary
Chapter 13: Going beyond These Pages
Technical requirements
Finding your niche – what Krita can do for you
Working on your weaknesses – exercises for artistic growth
Reading recommendations – where should you go from here?
Remembering the single most important rule of art
Summary
Index
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