So I tried posting this onto reddit, however with a new account 0 karma - my posts have been under “Moderator review”/ Not posted at all, So far the community on these Krita Forums have been more welcoming and being Krita-specific I’m sure other users might run into similar problems - hopefully this is ok to post in general forums section…
So my little overview is; I’ve recently made the switch from using IbisPaint (Mobile, drawing with Finger/Unofficial Pen) to Krita (PC, Wacom Intuos). Whilst I didn’t particularly find the transition hard when it comes down to movement, but I feel like I’m making some very basic errors whilst using PC and wondered if anyone has any specific advice to overcome these errors;
Lack of Pen Variation and experimentation within my pieces
I have downloaded packs, tested pens and have some favourites and added them under their own tag so I remember which ones I like, but when it comes to practice or working on a piece I end up completely forgetting how the different pen textures and effects interact and then end up completing a piece with 1 pen, leaving my pieces looking very flat. How do you trick your brain to remember to experiment with varies pens in a piece? What is the minimal pens you usually work with? Is there any Artists or Practices methods I could study that may encourage me to remember to use a range?
Lack of Zooming in / eyeballing and rushing details
When I was on phone it was habit to zoom in as you draw and as a result, zooming in for details came naturally. But now on PC I have a tendency to make my sketch or blot out the shapes with colour whilst in full frame - but then never zoom in for the smaller details. Even with the small screen in the corner to show me how the whole piece looks like, zooming into pieces just seems to repel me. I don’t know if its me wanting to rush to finish a piece, or something about the computer screen itself or even down to the sizes (I’ve been using 2000px x 2500 px with res of 300 since starting Krita. I don’t really have any preference but this is just for reference if anyone has any suggestions to work on). Once again, is there any recommendation to trick my brain into using zoom more often? Or whether there’s a particular practice activity I could do to force me into becoming more used to? Or even how does one ‘slow down’ the process - how long should practice vs bigger study pieces take; when is it too much time or too little for actual study progression? What is a suitable range of time? Whilst I guess it does range from person to person, what would you recommend to minimise the rush to the end habit which leads me to avoid zooming for details?
I’m sure more issues will come about in time but these are currently the two main problems I have been facing lately as silly as they sound. 2025 is my year where I really want to push in improving my art especially of the human form, so getting over these initial hurdles would be great! Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions!
Over the last year, I’ve reduced the number of brushes I use in a single image. Often I use only one (plus an eraser). By pushing myself to get brushstroke variety from that one brush preset, I’ve learned a lot about Krita and the brush editor.
I’m only sharing this so that you won’t feel bad about using only one brush on a drawing.
Best wishes on your push for development this year.
You don’t have to use a variety of brushes in each piece. I frequently use one or two brushes myself. Sometimes, I’ll use additional brushes, depending on what I need for the piece.
As for not zooming in, that could depend on what look you’re (maybe subconsciously) going for. At this stage of my life, I find that I zoom in less and go for an overall appearance.
So, don’t worry, just do your art and enjoy it! Explore and grow in your art.
Mostly one or two brushes, depending on the style. Like for hair I will want to be able to drag colour, and have a different brush for solid colour. Like @Sooz, I think the image looks best with trying to get the most out of a brush and also not going small. Drawing a thick line and removing part of it with a second stroke.
I forget to mirror. You could make a habit of zooming when you save, perhaps.
I don’t, when I do a “serious” piece I stick to the things I already know, I rarely experiment midst artwork because it always turns out wierd or looks out of place. For experiments I do separate projects where I only do the very specific detail I want to experiment with. Then when I think things work out I practice them and later use them in all my pieces.
In Rally driving there is this approach to maximize turning the car with least steering wheel input as possible. I use a similar one when painting, I only have a hand full of brushes I use for basically everything. Most of them are slightly modified versions of Krita’s default brushes. Some are completely custom made. So, all you need is basically just a few good brushes. I watched traditional painters and they do it the same. Like look at some Bob Ross videos for example, he paints a whole painting with just two or three Brushes and a knife.
However, since you feel something is lacking, try to emulate other peoples art styles. That way you have to force yourself to try different things. You will learn how and why they did something in a specific way, and perhaps you find it useful and find a way to incorporate it into your own works or at least learn what you don’t want to do. You won’t do these tings in every piece you do and maybe even never use them, and that’s okay too, but something will stick and it will make you understand when you need something specific.
This is something everyone goes through at some point, I guess. I see this with beginners a lot, too. They see someones artworks, download the same brushes and then wonder why they can’t figure them out or still can’t draw like the artist they have seen them at. This simply because of the difference in styles. It makes it hard to remember or get these brushes to work together because you are simply not used to it, or perhaps the styles are completely different. Perhaps you have seen this with other artists yourself once a while. They have a completely awesome character artwork but something looks off, the trees and the grass don’t look like they belong in the artwork and the background seems to be a different style, and that is because they often use the default grass and tree brush Photoshop (or whatever software they use) has and the assets stick out because they have a different style than the artists has. It takes some skill to take assets from other people and integrate them into someones own works seamlessly.
Eventually you will come to a point where your skill or style requires you to make your own brushes. Making your own tools (brush presets in this case) is a skill of it’s own which takes some time to master and some experience and a feel what brushes can do (in the specific software) and what you need for your style you want to go for.
Is this bad? I guess it depends. Would you stick your nose to someones pencil drawing and complain about the lack of detail. I zoomed in a lot too to work on tiny details, when I started out but at some point I noticed that it was rarely even worth because in full view, the “zoom level” most people look at the finished thing, the details were barely noticeable and sometimes even vanished completely. So I started to care a lot less about every detail I have to go closer than 100% zoom with, and depending on the image size even less and instead put more effort into composition and other stuff. Just hinting detail is enough, no one really expects you to draw every single leaf on a tree in the background. Working in zoom extensively can also make you lose sight of the whole picture, and suddenly you have shading or color that is off in some parts of your piece.
This is equivalent to a piece of paper of about 17 x 22 cm. That’s kinda small, don’t you think? I rarely go smaller than DIN A4 or better, A3. You might say that this isn’t really worth it since most displays don’t even have such high resolution, but it’s also to simply give yourself more space to draw (and if you like tiny details to render them better). Some brushes simply need some specific minimum size or pixels on the canvas to really shine, like the smudge brushes or bushes with textures. When I print my works then usually on canvases so I go for the typical canvas formats like 60 to 40 cm or something. Since I like having single strokes visible, like with real paint, also have to work on big canvases since they don’t really show otherwise (the brush magic I mentioned earlier). So, when your PC can handle it, maybe go for bigger canvas sizes, this will give you much more opportunity to really use textured brushes.
As you already guessed yourself, it depends on the person. I’d say do as long as you need until you “get it”, until you understood the thing you were trying to for that session. It’s not necessary to complete every work. Like, I maybe complete not even 10% if the things I start, perhaps less. When you think this is not leading you anywhere anymore or you got enough out of it and want to try a different approach, than you can simply stop. Don’t force yourself to finish everything. There is also no shame in putting something aside and come back to it a year later.
If you want to train yourself to becoming fast and efficient try speedpainting. And I don’t mean the fake ones often seen on YouTube where someone made a time lapse of a 20 hour paining session and calls it a speedpainting, but the real thing were you set yourself a short time limit (like 2 hours or something) and try to finish a piece in that set time (don’t allow yourself to work in it afterwards, times over, piece is done). This is what many artists use to test and compare their skill and it helps them identify things they are still struggling with. Did they took too much time sketching, were they struggling with the pose, wasted time on line art and details that were not necessary, perhaps you can do coloring and shading in one go, or was there insecurity about what tools and bush presets to use? Things like that. Speedpainting is also a good warm up for when you want to do a longer session, to get the creative juices flowing.
These are some tips but they are not for digital painting per se, they also apply to general art.
When I switch a brush it’s because I know I have something else that’ll help to achieve some effect faster than using a plain brush. For example: Natural textured hair, clouds of thick fog, leaves.
Some brushes I only ever touch on paintings with specific subjects, because only then they’re useful.
When I’m going more textured and painterly I rarely add any painterly detail until at least 60% of the process. You can absolutely add this kind of detail that looks effortless and spontaneous at the end, on top of everything. 90% of my painting is done with an airbrush or equivalent plain brush, despite going very painterly sometimes.
About rushing at the end, a good question to ask yourself is: Aren’t you rushing because you already worked on all the parts you found interesting?
That’s pretty common. It can be hard to keep working on a piece when everything you like painting is done and what you don’t like looks kinda okay. A good strategy to avoid it is to try to bring the entire piece to the same level of finish no matter the stage, and to not put much work into the things you really like and are comfortable with until you really need them to look more defined, postponing the feeling of closure of working on them for as long as you can.
DON’T ZOOM IN! (not as much anyways)… Zooming in is actually opposite of what you really need to do… what you need to do is complete 80% of your piece zoomed out… then zoom in on the focal point of your painting and only do the details on that focal point. Doing it this way, you get a balance between loose and tight, and the viewer’s eye will gradually be drawn into the focal point because of all the details there.
Also, as mentioned already… use just one or two brushes. That’s it.
I agree about the zoom. However, I tend to have this problem where when I paint a detail such as character’s eyes, I feel like I lack the accuracy and it looks a bit sloppy. Maybe my resolution is too low too (I use A5 300 dpi as I primarily do rough line sketches currently). So in cases like that I zoom in to improve my pen accuracy.
If I get to a more serious stage, I open a secondary view to see a smaller version of the image at all times. Heh, I think painting is a bit like an RTS or a MOBA game in this regard You need to have your minimap open and frequently look at it as you play.
That’s basically the size of my small pocket sketch book, It’s no surprise you have trouble with details on a canvas that small, but is also very little room to actually add them, which is of course good for rough sketches to not get lost in details already.
Yeah, what I try to do is to start on this small A5 and then just resize the canvas once I think the sketch is worth working on further (usually it isn’t but I’m working on it).
I do something similar. Often I start with a huge canvas still and zoom in and only use that small portion, because I like doing similar sketches on the same canvas. If I think something is good I copy paste it to a different file or something.
When it comes to brushes I concur with most of the comments. I just use 3 generally. A brush with texture which I use for 80% of the painting and an Airbrush with the Lasso tool. and a Mixer brush which I only recommend when you know how use you brushstrokes to get the edges that you want, soft edges and hard edges or lost edges. So don’t worry to not use many brushes, experts are known for using their tools at 100%, not for using many tools poorly.
As for the scale problem and entering into details too soon. I would say that you need to make a conscious effort of zooming out when you remember it. But as previous comments have said, you can also start the drawing in a really small size and resolution, and when you are done with the structure of the drawing you can upscale it. Then you add the first layer of details and upscale again and add the second layer of details. It has its advanges and its disadvantages. The advantages are that because you start small the performance of Krita and its brushes will be faster, obviously because is small even if you want enter into details you won’t be able to so your only choice is too work on the whole picture first. The disadvantages are every time that you upscale, Every part of the image will get pixelated a little so maybe you will have to fix things (Specially hard edges) that if you started drawing in the original size and did the Brushwork properly you wouldn’t have to fix, This is specially noticeable if you go for a clean look. Like anime and manga for example, if you go for something more texturized and “messy” look, this Method could work for you. Also if you are saving your proccess with the Krita Recorder tool. The beginning of the painting could be in too little resolution because you have to maintain the whole resolution through the video, so for example if you want a 1080 video but your images are like in 240 for most of the video it could be problematic.
So yeah for me. It is just best to make the conscious effort to zoom out and work in the final size and resolution. Zoom out the most that you can, what Krita allows and try to go as far as you can in your painting with that zoom, the zoom in a little, go as far as you can an repeat. If you practice enough it will second nature to start you drawings at that scale. And start drawing thumbs.
Zoom is very helpful for line accuracy and other things, besides avoiding jagged edges that can happen sometimes when drawing with zoom out.
Instead of avoiding it altogether my advice is to open a second window with the same document to act as an outliner, but better. You’ll be able to resize it to check areas of interest or look at the artwork as a whole in a window larger than the outliner, where the piece can be mirrored and turned into grayscale for value checks, all in real time as you paint without interfering with the Krita instance containing the canvas you’re working on.
I also prefer a new window instead of e.g. the overview docker. I can recommend this plugin for the task – Cliscylla/krita_windowed_new_view
It lets you bind the “new window” action to a hotkey, it opens without any menus, and allows to be set “Always On Top”. I just let it float over the main canvas, as I prefer having it close to where I work in the painting.
I do this too. I thought I was the only one, lol. But yeah I would start with a big canvas, but zoom in for small quick sketches. If I see something I like, I zoom out and scale the layer of my favorite sketch.
I come from an experience that began in 1999 with a Wacom and the PS 5. So there was a limitation in the brushes. We only had variations in thickness and opacity and different brush tips (therefore a little texture)
From that point on, I was a little confused when I started using Krita, because there were so many options. So little by little I found some brushes that I liked. I like to use a single brush to do everything, that was the initial secret.
So in PS I used two brushes, a simple one (round tip and sharp edge) and another one with some texture. My paintings were made with hatching and overlapping brush strokes (using opacity)
I didn’t use blender/smudger brushes.
If you look for artist brush packs, you may have to paint or think like them to get a good result.
Suggestion: choose a brush that can bring a good result to make a complete drawing.
Good luck!
(by google translator)
Lack of Pen Variation and experimentation within my pieces
You need to have your minimap open and frequently look at it as you play.
but I’m working on it).