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White-Heron

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Grab your shiny Krita 2.6 release! :D Linux users probably know what to do. For you Windows users out there, you can grab either Krita 2.6, or Krita 2.6.8.3. : www.kogmbh.com/download.html

Krita 2.6.8.3 is, in fact, the work-in-progress version of Krita 2.7. So, it's possibly less stable, but also has shiny new features, such as:
- Textures can now be used for Color Smudge (and Hatching brushes) too! Is it cool? Yes it is! :D
- Textures are now more dynamic with a "Strength" option, which allows you to control the intensity of textures. Read more about it here: www.davidrevoy.com/?article107…
- The normal freehand drawing mode now comes with better smoothing options. Just choose "Weighted Smoothing" in tool options, adjust the settings (increase the weight), and that's it!
- Vector drawing in Krita seems to work a lot better now. Just make a vector layer, use any of the vector tools, and draw away. There's even a new freehand path tool where you can adjust settings. It seems that it will come with start and end markers options, so you'll be able to easily make arrowed lines! It doesn't seem to work yet, but it's definitely a great idea!

Well, I'm telling all this to Windows users, but it won't do you any good if it doesn't work, would it? Well, Krita 2.6.8.3 is running just fine on my Windows XP machine! So uninstall all previous versions of Krita and go grab it now! A few things:
- It takes a while to install. Don't worry, that's normal.
- It takes a while to start up, as with previous versions. Don't worry, that's normal too.
- The default setting was a bit too dark for me, you can change it in Settings -> Theme.
That's it, really. Have fun!
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It took me nearly 5 months (which is, uh, 10 times longer than I'd anticipated), but I'm finally done! As of now, all of Krita's current paint brushes have documentation/tutorials! Hurray!
=.=.^_^ \.^_^.\ |.^_^.| /.^_^./ ^_^.=.=

It's a super fun program, so you no longer need to let the lack of documentation put you off. Try Krita Today!

Recently it even added a Resource page! krita.org/resources :D

*parties* *shake* *wiggle* *wobble* *crash*

Edit: And I FINALLY figured out how all those DA users are using alternate emoticons! Some users create accounts Just so DA users can use the avatars as emoticons. Imagine that! It took me only... 6 years to figure it out?

:iconikissitplz:
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It's been a while! Actually, for the past few weeks, I've been spending a few minutes every day to play around with Krita's brushes, just to get used to them. When Krita 2.6 comes out I plan to release a new tutorial, which will (among other things) cover Krita's brush dynamics in more depth. (I have no idea when Krita 2.6 will be released though)

In the meantime though, I've discovered a few tricks!
- Size: map "Size" to "Speed." That's it. If you need thinner brushes, you just need to draw slower. I like to use this option for just about... everything: clouds, textures, foliage... You can try this with opacity as well. If you need the transition to be very smooth, use the "draw dynamically" drawing mode with 40-50 drag. Basically, this is a way for mouse-users to emulate tablet pressure!
- Angle: I also like to activate angle -> drawing angle. The brush will now follow the direction of your stroke. "Fuzzy" is also nice for random angles.
- Color jitter: "source -> gradient" seems to be broken. Activate "color -> mix -> fuzzy" instead. The color will now vary between the background and foreground color. When drawing foliage, for example, choose two shades of green for more color variation. You can achieve the same effect with color smudge brushes with "gradient -> fuzzy."

In the meantime, for those seeking to get the most out of Krita's brush system, try doodling something for a few minutes every day (I'm doing landscapes). It doesn't matter if the result is only good for the trash. Save it as a .jpeg and look over the resulting "gallery" from time to time. Eventually you'll get used to the brushes, see their limitations, and start tweaking them to achieve the results you want.
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I think I'm slowly finding my optimal "lazy" drawing combination:
- Sketch in pencil
- Color with either Inkscape or Krita (lineart as a multiply layer at the top)
- Chibis can be done directly in Inkscape though

Of course, this means skipping a "clean" lineart phase, as I did before with Inkscape. It was so boring. D:

Now, sketching lineart with the Sketch tool in Krita instead of on paper is a SUPER LOT OF FUN. The problem though is that it's so fun that I get distracted and don't get anything done. o_o;;

So, that leaves doing the lineart with good'ol pencil and paper (which also happens to be the fastest option, without a tablet anyway), maybe some adjustment in Gimp and then off to slapping some colors real quick in some other tool. The downside of pencil and paper is that it's harder to fix things, so off to learning the basics again to not make Too many mistakes. >.>

(and to learn how to draw clothes. A long time ago, I read that as long as you had a good grasp of what's underneath, you'll be able to learn clothes easily then. It was a lie. A liiiiiee.)

Aww man, my drawings look so different depending on the program used. I wonder if one day, someone will accuse me of stealing from different galleries because of that? :P Not that there's that much worth stealing.
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I've been noticing that DA tends to be particularly bad at compressing the types of images I do, i.e. images with very crisp and defined lines, as I draw everything in a vector program. By the time the image gets compressed, everything becomes blurry looking. :|

Any tips on how to manage this?
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