KRITA CRASH COURSE drawing ink and paint

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>> This video is a crash
course on how to use Krita.

So I'm going to start off by hitting Ufile,

and I'm going to make my image
let's say 3,000 by 3,000.

And I'm going to make this 72 pixels per inch.

That's good for viewing on screen.

You don't need to have it higher than that.

That's mainly for print.

So we'll just keep it at 72 pixels per inch.

And I'm going to hit create.

And so we have this image
that's square, and I can zoom in

and out using the plus and minus keys.

And right now I've got the
pencil brush as my default brush.

There are lots of different brushes
that you can play around with.

And I encourage you to check out
these when you have a moment.

You can also right click on the canvas, and
you can access all of your favorite brushes.

All of this is totally customizable.

You can also switch between
two different colors.

You've got the color wheel here.

You can zoom in and out of your canvas.

All sorts of things right here
from this pop up menu here.

There's also the color wheel on the right hand
side, and then the layers that you are going

to be painting on over here
on the right hand side.

On the left you can see there's a whole bunch
of different icons that look very similar

to Photoshop or Clip Studio if
you're familiar with either of those.

Now, we won't go into most of these right now.

We're just going to get down to the
drawing and inking and coloring part.

So I'm going to begin by drawing,
and you can use the bracket keys,

the left and right bracket keys to
make your brush bigger or smaller.

And I'm going to change the opacity of my brush

to something a little bit higher
here, and I'm going to begin drawing.

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I'm just going to pause for a
moment to go over the erase tool.

All you have to do is, depending on the type
of stylus you're using, you can just flip it

over on its other side, and it will
automatically activate the eraser,

and you can erase like that.

You can also choose the eraser from the
drop down menu here, and then switch back

to the pencil if you would prefer.

Not everybody has a stylus that will allow
you to erase on the other end but most do.

Also to undo all you have to
do is hit control z to undo.

You may also want to go up to settings, dockers,
and they actually have an undo history window

that you can have here at the bottom.

And if I -- I can undoc that.

I can put it over here.

I can also -- I prefer to have it together with
my layers, and I just switch over here like that

so that the layers are over here, and then I can
swap between the undo history in case if I need

to undo like 20 moves because I want to see
the difference between not one move but 20.

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So from here we're going to
start the inking process.

The first thing I need to do
is I need to make a new layer.

So I'm going to go over here to
layers, I'm going to hit the plus side,

and I'm going to double click on
this and just call it my ink layer.

And just to be safe I'm going
to label this sketch layer.

So on my ink layer I'm going to start inking.

And I'm also going to bring the
opacity down on my sketch layer so it's

like very light just so I can barely see it.

I'm going to lock it using the lock here.

And that's going to make it so that I don't
accidentally start inking on the wrong thing.

So I'm going to go back to ink, and
I'm going to choose the ink free G pen.

I'm going to flip the colors
over here and choose black

as my alternate color, and
I'm going to start inking.

When I ink there's a couple
of things that I like to do.

On the right hand side there's
this section for tool options.

And there's a way to smooth
out your brush strokes.

So it makes it -- especially for
inking increasing the distance

for your brush smoothing will just
give you a slightly smoother stroke

and will be less jittery
and, you know, less wobbly.

So I don't like to tweak it
so that it's up all the way.

But play around with the settings here and
you'll see a difference as you're drawing.

So I'll set this to half-ish,
and I think I'm ready to go.

So I'm just going to zoom in
and start the inking process.

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Something worth noting is as I'm moving
around I'm using the space bar to move

around my canvas, so it's a
really handy way to stay zoomed in

and see different parts of
your canvas very easily.

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Okay, now that we have completed the
inking process I'm going to start coloring.

Now I made a quick little color swatch here.

And rather than futzing around with
colors I quickly looked online,

and I found some concept art, and I did a
quick switch for concept art color swatches.

I found some concept art that I like.

I liked the color palette here, and
you can choose colors however you like.

If you've taken color theory classes then
you can use your color theory knowledge

and choose colors.

But if you're unsure you can always
look at what other people have done.

And, fortunately, you can easily find color
swatches that people post that they use

in their art, and you can use those, too.

So all you have to do is save this image
and then drag and drop it into Krita,

and I'll show you how to do that really quick.

So I would just open this image in a new tab,
drag it to my desktop, and then I go back

to Krita and I can just pick the image,
drag it in here, insert as a new layer,

and now I've got it up here in the corner.

And you can use this dropper tool, and
the up key for the dropper tool is key.

And you can sample each one of these
colors and then go back to your brush tool

and make a little mark here that
basically throws down the colors.

I'm also going to show you a really good
technique for quickly inking things.

And this is a technique that
you can use for cell painting

if you choose to do some animation in Krita.

It makes the process really quick and easy.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to
select my ink layer, and I'm going to copy

that ink layer, and then I'm
going to paste the ink layer.

I'm going to lock the top layer
here, so right now it's locked.

And then I'm going to unlock
the one underneath it.

And I'm going to sample one of the colors.

We'll start with, say, the face.

And I'm going to use the fill, which
the paint bucket tool here if fill.

The hot key for that is f. And once I have that
color sample then I go to f and I fill it in.

And you can see it works perfectly.

And that's because all of my lines are airtight.

And when you fill something it goes
right up to the edge of those lines.

And as long as there are no gaps and holes
you should be able to fill it as long

as all those lines are contiguous
and there are no holes.

So, also, I have a setting on
my fill to grow two pixels.

And I hit the top ink layer,
and I'm going to fill

on the bottom ink layer to
show you how that looks.

So if I zoom way in and I fill it, you
can see it actually eats into the edges

of the line work, and it
actually eats some of it away.

That's actually a good thing.

And when I put my top ink
layer down it hides that.

So it's good to have the grow two pixels on just
to like eat away at a little bit of the lines

so that you don't see any like nasty
edges between the ink line and the fill.

So I'm going to turn this back on, and
I'm going to start filling in everything.

And the first problem I'm going to
come across is I'm going to sample this

for the beard, and I'm going to go to fill.

And when I go to fill in the
beard it fills in everything.

It fills in the beard, the ear and
the hair because there's no line here

that says, hey, don't fill this part in.

Or there's this little gap here and Krita
doesn't know that like there's little gap

that I don't want it to go
all the way up to the hat.

So what I have to do is I have to just
use the brush tool, and I'm just going

to brush a line to block it here.

And then I'm going to brush another
line right here to block that.

And now when I go to the fill tool it will
fill that in just fine without any problems.

So I'm going to go through and
repeat that task for a little bit.

I also wanted to mention that once you sample
all of these colors you can right click,

and your most recently sampled colors actually
show up here which is super convenient

so that you don't have to keep
going back and sampling the color.

You could just right click and
then sample the color here.

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Now that we've got the color in
place, the next thing I'm going

to do is I'm going to add a shadow layer.

So to add a shadow layer I'm going to create
a new layer that is behind my ink layer

but above the ink layer which we should
now just call this the color layer.

And that's one step above the color layer.

And I'm going to bring the opacity of
this layer down to about 50 percent,

and I'm going to set it to multiply.

And what multiply does is when you paint over
something with a particular color you can see

that it still shows the color underneath, but
it darkens and adds color to the layers below.

And so I picked out a blue
color for the shadows.

I have like nice cool colored shadows.

And I am going to begin just
looking at the character.

Say the light source was
coming from this direction,

I would say my shadow would start
somewhere around here and maybe here.

And if I just cut straight across the character
just to start, just more simplified, you know,

something like this, the whole left side
of the character would be in shadow here.

There might be a little bit that's
visible sticking out here for the arm

because the light would maybe hit
the character and put some of the arm

in shade and then the rest in light.

So I'm just going to block
all of this out right now.

And I'm still using the old G pen, and
I'm just going to do that right now.

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Okay, so here's what the shadows look
like, so this is what I blocked in.

And it's looking pretty good.

I'm also noticing I didn't name this so
I'm going to quickly name this shadow.

And at this point we don't
really need the sketch lines.

They're barely visible at this point,
but I'm going to hide those as well.

The next layer I'm going to
add is a highlight layer.

So if the sun is going in this
direction and it's creating a shadow,

it might also create a little bit
of a highlight on the character.

So what I'm going to do is
I'm going to make a new layer.

I'm going to name that layer light, and I'm
going to set that opacity to about 50 percent.

And instead of a multiplied layer
I'm going to use a lighten layer.

And so you can also play
with lighten or luminosity.

They all each do similar things.

So I'm going to use a -- I'll actually go for
the luminosity layer since we're painting light.

And I'm going to select a warm color, so
something that's sort of on the yellow-ish side.

I think that would be good.

And, again, opacity is set way low.

And so thinking about where the -- you
know, how the light is hitting the character

from the side, then I would
want to start going in

and add a little bit of, you
know, light on this side.

So I'm going to more or less just like
give little bits of like rim lighting.

So it's really just kind of a line
going along the edge of the side

of the character so it's not over everything.

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Okay, so there's the light layer.

And you can see it makes a
little bit of a difference.

You can see now there's a definite
light source giving a highlight.

And then we've got our shadow, and together
they create this really nice effect.

I'm still on the fence on whether
lighten or luminosity works better.

Luminosity is bleaching everything out,
and I was hoping it wouldn't do that.

But it still looks pretty good.

I think lighten is going
to be the winner for here.

So now that we've got all of
this I can use my erase tool,

and I can go into my shadow layer
and I can erase all this stuff.

Go into my color layer or my paint layer,
and I'll just erase all of this stuff out,

and now I've got my finished drawing.

And so now that I've got this there's
a bunch of things that I could do.

I could still keep playing with the shadow, you
know, and like start adding say, like, you know,

like a shadow underneath the
character or something, you know,

something like that to help
ground the character.

You could totally do something like that.

Not necessary, but it can be kind of fun to do
as like a finishing touch to put the character

in more of a space instead of
just kind of like floating there.

There's a really few like how much
you want to go with it after that.

You can also add a background.

You can start playing with colors
for the background and so forth.

And I mean the possibilities are endless.

But this is basically where I'm
going to say, okay, this is done.

And there's maybe one or
two other little bits here.

Like I want to put more highlights on his eyes.

So I'm make a special layer just
for the eye highlight just for now.

And I'm going to choose a light color.

And I'm just going to go in
and just real quick just make

that a little bit more pronounced,
give his eyes that extra glow.

And now that's pretty much done.

If the character that you made isn't
quite centered and you'd like to move it

around in the composition, the best way to do
that is select all the layers that you want

to affect, right click and
select group and quick group.

So when you select quick group you can
select group 2, and then go over here

to the transform a layer or selection.

If you want to scale or change the
position of your drawing in the composition,

the easiest way to do that with all of your
layers is select all of your layers, right click

and go to group, quick group,
and then select the group.

And then go over here to
transform a layer or selection.

So it's this little thing here.

You click on that, and now
I'm in the selection mode.

If it's not already in the selection
mode, you right click and click free.

And then if you click down on it on your
canvas it should pull up this stuff here.

And you can now scale it however you want.

But notice like it's scaling
it all weird right now.

And so in order to scale it uniformly
you have to hold down the shift key

as you're moving it, and so you can scale it.

Just keep in mind that if you're scaling it up,

if you scale it up too much you're
going to get noticeably blurry lines.

A little bit of scaling up is totally fine.

And so say I wanted to like get the character
off to the side and wanted to put some text

or something over here on the right hand
side, so I just move the character over here.

And then when I'm done I just
hit enter and I'm good to go.

And then I hide out the sketch lines here.

And those are pretty much the
basics for making a drawing in Krita

and doing some simple ink and paint techniques.

So I hope you found this helpful and thanks.

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