Aaaa Your Art Is So Good, If You Don't Mind Me Asking, How Do You Draw Grass Like That? Whenever I Try

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Why Krita is Awesome: A Collection of Reasons Why This Program is Worth Taking a Look At

Krita is a painting program that has been around for a while, and in the last few years, underwent major changes and improvements.  Because of these improvements, many artists are using it not just because it is free, but because it offers amazing features.  These are by no means all of the great things Krita has to offer, but simply some of my favorite features of the program.

1. The Brush Engines.

Yes, engines.  As in plural.  There are many.  And they all do different things.  There is no way you could possibly capture all of its possibilities with one screen shot, but here are just some of the possibilities. Along side standard round, square, and shape, and textured brushes, there are brushes that smear, blend, and create interesting abstract strokes.  There are brushes for filters, and one of my favorites, the Experiment Brush, which is basically a pre-filled lasso tool. 

Brushes also support weighted smoothing, or brush stabilizers.

This is incredibly useful for line art.  And while I do not usually use this feature, it is something that I feel many programs are lacking, such as Photoshop.

But its brushes aren’t the only thing about Krita with variety.

2. Color Selector Customization. 

Whether you prefer something basic, or something more complicated, Krita will likely have what youre looking for.  You are not likely to find yourself missing your other program’s color wheels.  There are even more options than this, and other color selectors.

Gotta love that customization.

Krita also has some great naviation tools.

3. On the fly rotation, zoom, and brush sizing.

With krita, zooming, rotating, and brush size scaling are all smooth, and dynamic with the use of hot keys.  These are features I miss when in other programs.  To zoom, Ctrl+Middle mouse button, hover over the screen to zoom in and out.  The same with shift rotates (press the ‘5’ key to reset rotation).  Holding down shift and draging your brush on the canvas dynamically changes its size, allowing you to see the change, and get the exact size you want without brackets. Brackets also work, if that’s what you are used to.  Krita also has highly customizable hot keys.

4. The Pop Up Pallet

The pop up pallet is a set of your 10 favorite brushes (which you can edit), and a built in color wheel that appears when you right click on the canvas.  It is incredibly useful for switching between those few brushes that you use in almost every picture.

5.  Real time, seamless tiles creation.

Pressing the W key in Krita will infinitely tile your canvas, and allow you to work real time on simple to complex tiled images.  You can zoom in and out to see how your tiles work form a distance, and paint freely to create seamless artwork easily, without having to check using filters and manually tiling. Very usefull for patterns, backgrounds, and games.

6. The Symmetry Tool

This one goes without saying, Krita supports both horizontal and vertical symmetry, along with a brush that is capable of radial symmtry with as many directions as you like.

Go nuts, kid.

There are many more reasons why this program is awesome.  And it is only going to get more awesome.  And the coolest thing about it, is that it is 100% free.  So go check it out!  There’s nothing to lose. Krita isn’t for everyone, it can be hard to get the hang of, and it is not meant for photo editing, it is a program completely focused on digital painting from start to finish. 

Give it a go and see if Krita is the program for you.

This nature photography blog is wonderful for references

Tuesday Tips - Hair There’s no hard rules to draw hair (or anything for that matter), but the one thing that I try to keep in my mind is that there’s AIR in hair. I can draw it as a shape because there’s hundreds of thousands of them, but I’m also considering the space between them. For example, the volume of dry hair and wet hair will be dramatically different. Also, the way it behaves will differ greatly from person to person. I mostly think about the “weight” of the hair. Longer hair will means that the mass of hair will be heavier and react accordingly. *As always, leave a message if there’s a topic you would like to see covered. Norm

Drew a bunch of trees

Hi! I really love your art and I'm wondering if you should show me how you color and shade. thanks! :)

tadaaaaa!

Hey Ross, I'm currently 15, a Junior in high school, and love to animate. I don't think going to an art institute/university is the right move though when I get out of HS - financially or for many other reasons. Community College is a huge possibility though, as it's less expensive and would still teach me more things about animation all together. For the most part, I believe animation can be a self-taught experience, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

That’s great dude.  Don’t feel like you HAVE to go get an education in animation to succeed.  I tried it, but it wasn’t for me.  I found I wasn’t really learning enough compared to what I learnt just fiddling and making mistakes by myself.  I mean look at Arin, he didn’t even finish high school yet he taught himself  to be an animator.  Some people learn better being pushed by an education system, some are better left to figure things out for themselves.  If think you’re better going it alone then GREAT!  You’re an autodidact!

Here’s some stuff I’d recommend you focus on while getting started: 

Learn Flash or Toon Boom.  

Maya/3DS Max/Zbrush if you’re interested in 3D (I have a minor background with it)

Study life drawing and human anatomy.  Try this if you’re at a loss for material: http://www.posemaniacs.com/

Keep an organized folder of art reference (find it by following art tutorial blogs or your favorite artists).  I have gigabytes of reference in my folders.

Get your head around cinematography.  Watch legendary films and figure out what makes the shots great.  One exercise is to take your favorite shots and make silhouette thumbnails of how things are placed, helps you  break it down in your head.

Composition!  It’s crazy and even those who get it sometimes don’t get it.. but just look it up online to get your head around it.  It’s all about placement and arrangement of shit.

MAKE FRIENDS!  Talk to other artists like yourself who are starting out.  I met Arin online through Newgrounds when I was 16/17 and we’ve been friends ever since.  It’s important to have like minded friends!

Keep a sketchbook, draw all the time.  If you prefer doing it digitally then that’s fine, but keeping a sketchbook is a magical thing.  Also helps with your line confidence, at least I think so.

If you want to develop your own stories to go along with your animations, consider the following books: Screenwriting 101 (I LOVE this book, really great read AND it’s written by someone pretending to be The Hulk), On Writing: A memoir of the Craft (Stephen King!  Haven’t read this one yet but friends recommend it) and also Save the Cat! (this one is more so about selling scripts and writing to a formula, don’t take it as gospel.. But it’s interesting).

Voice act! Shit man, just get a decent microphone when you can.  Make goofy voices, do imitations.  Get silly!  Lots of animators have at least some experience doing voice acting!

WATCH STUFF.  Seriously, I can not stress this enough.  Everything is derivative from other works and that’s okay.  Inspiration comes from everywhere and anything.  My late friend Monty also preached this, he even proudly told me some of his early influence for RWBY such as Black Rock Shooter.  Finding influence breeds passion.  You’re not slacking off watching cartoons, you’re researching.

ANIMATE! Do it however you can!  Stop motion lego, flipping paper.. I don’t care.  Just do it. Whatever you learn, It all translates across any version of the medium.

ANIMATORS SURVIVAL KIT.  This book is a must and most animation schools highly recommend it.  It was written by Richard Williams the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (among other things).  If you’re not big on reading, then you’re in luck because it’s MOSTLY pretty pictures.  http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

Lastly but not least.. Just don’t stop.  The people you see online and on TV right now, they’re not kicking ass because of some god given talent.  They’re there because they didn’t stop.  They persevered through it all and kept going, no matter what anyone else told them. 

Good luck!

apparently ppl don’t know about waifu2x??? despite its… concerning name it’s literally the most convenient website i’ve ever come across as an artist

it allows you to resize artwork without it becoming pixellated. this is a MASSIVE help if you, for example, make lineart too small or something. it works best with things that 1. have no textures 2. have smooth lines 3. have cel shading, but it still works really damn well for things that don’t fit that profile

here’s an example:

normal size

2x in paint

2x in waifu2x

so like, there’s that. go wild

I got multiple people asking for help with eyes, so I threw something together quick

EDIT: ah yeah, my bad! thank you @yipyo20

note that it works best with thin lineart (I used SAI2 for this, but I think you can use any art program  with a overlay layer mode)