Hey! I’m new here and just recently found out about Krita. What an amazing tool!! I’m already in love
I’m also kind of new to drawing, picked up the pencil again after some 25 years or so… But can’t put it down again now.
Currently I’m drawing by hand, scanning my work and go from there. It’s fun, I’m learning quickly and it works ok. I’m still a total noob to shading in Krita though, hope the results get a little better once I have my newly ordered tablet in the mail
Anyways, I’m currently designing and illustrating my first children’s book I wrote some time ago and would love to get some tips from more experienced artists, on how to create backgrounds, that are suited for a children’s book in Krita?
I tried to find tutorials regarding background creation online but couldn’t find anything helpful at all.. I’d be grateful for any kind of tips, like:
How should I start? With a hand-drawn image, a photo, or mix colours directly in Krita?
What kind of tools, brushes, techniques to use to get interesting effects like a cloudy sky, a green meadow, a forest and forest floor etc…
Would be fantastic to get some inspiration and tips from you. Looking forward to being part of this seemingly very kind and helpful community!
Welcome, @Mort. I hope you get some great tips. There are a few people in this forum who post about making children’s book illustrations. Maybe search the word ‘children’ in the search box at top right? You might get connected to some interesting people.
Note: There are not many tutorials for Krita, as other painting software is more popular among tutorial creators. But the general concepts and ideas are the same in any software.
Maybe start from there and then ask more specific questions. E.g. “I like the Ghibli style I found in the tutorial xyz. Can you suggest techniques, brushes, layer setup, … to create that look in Krita? I am especially interested in the look of the clouds, flowers, grass, …”
EDIT:
You can put this search into duckduckgo:
digital+painting+backgrounds+tutorial+krita
to limit the results to Krita. The results will then be less focused on “backgrounds” because, as said, there are not many topic specific tuts for Krita.
Not knowing how deep you already dived into the sea of Krita resources and discovered perhaps interesting ones for you, I guess you can profit from the bundles that I will present below, in the case you don’t already know them.
Here you will find a collection of resources that I believe may help you with your project!
And yes, I am aware that you weren’t looking for brushes, but many of the ones presented here are so-called cheat brushes and roughly cover the subject area you want to work in.
Let us begin with brushes, mainly for foliage and environment:
An absolutely wonderful bundle can be found and downloaded, when you follow my instructions on how to obtain it. And it is not found if you follow the link in the box with picture, that is “only” the resource from which this precious bundle was derived:
A set from iForce73, loved by many:
Currently, I’m working (again) on an improved version of another iForce73 bundle called “Environment Brushes and Forest Vegetation 3”, making it conveniently usable in Krita 5+, but it will take longer as I expected.
With this bundle, you have the option to get her bundle for free via the Google Drive link or purchase it via the link to her Patreon Store if you want to support her (and I assure you, you’d be doing a really good deed). Maybe try it out via the Google link, and if you like it, buy it at a price you set on Patreon:
For this bundle, the same is true as for the one above, if you exchange the Google Drive link against the one from Dropbox which is offered here:
This is also an iForce73 bundle, which I find a little weaker than all the other bundles he offered back then, although the downloads are on a good and relatively stable level:
Here is a bundle for creating maps and environment in bird’s eye view (only the link to itch.io is functional):
For clouds, you may want to try out these bundles:
And now a general purpose bundle instead of specialized bundles.
@FizzyFlower’s “ESSENTIAL” Brushset VERSION 2 is a huge set of brushes for all purposes with 400+ Brushes for Clouds, Paint, Hair, Fur, FX, Foliage, Trees, Leaves, Texture, Smudge, you name it, and very probably you’ll find it in this bundle:
Maybe I’ll add further resources to this posting, but right now I’m out of ideas, and it does not need to wait two more days open and untouched waiting for further ideas.
