Krita

Krita Latest Version

If you love Krita or want to pick it up then you already know it’s a great art program.

In my opinion Krita is the best free Photoshop alternative out there with many of the same features: layering, blend modes, and custom brushes(among others).

Krita is a free and open source illustration and painting graphics software suite which performs quite nicely for those with a creative side. Though many people use expensive software like Adobe Photoshop these days, Krita is an excellent alternative with its own niche. Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit) touchscreen. View All (7) 7 REPLIES 7. Level 19 90,221 90,098 11,577 24,852 Message 2 of 8 Flag Post ‎ 06:39. Krita-Tutorials is the best place where you can find tutorials and resources around Krita. If you still don’t know what Krita is. Krita is a free and open source digital. Krita tutorial series: shop: to the chann.

Granted the Krita community isn’t as large as the Adobe community so it’s tougher to find brushes. However there are some incredible sets online and they’re all 100% free.

This list includes my top picks for the best free Krita brush packs.

Whether you’re a Krita pro or someone who’s just learning the software these brushes will improve your digital art workflow tenfold.

Krita Brushkit v8.2

Artist David Revoy is well known in the Krita community. He contributes quite a bit to the project and he’s one of the few artists running all FOSS. That’s quite impressive!

He’s been publishing a brush kit for years and the most recent version is v8.2(updated frequently).

David updates this brush kit fairly often with new features, brush descriptions, icons, and new features/bug fixes. Especially as Krita gets updated.

That means you always want the newest version if you can run it.

David’s brushes are some of the best around and they include a variety of styles:

• Light sketching pencil
• Digital inking pen
• Drawing brush
• Paint brush styles(flat, roller, etc)
• Eraser styles
• And way too many others to list!

In total the pack includes 64 brushes so this is likely one of the best packs you’d ever want for getting into Krita.

Take a look at David’s work on Patreon. He does all of that with his brush pack so if he can do that level of work in Krita I’d like to think anyone could.

Hushcoil Brushes

The newer Hushcoil Brushes are pretty unique and very detailed. The entire pack includes 280 total brushes with a lot of variety.

You might notice this is all hosted on Gumroad, a popular marketplace for digital art goodies. But this specific brush set is available for free so any payments offered here are just donations.

The brush set includes four bundle packs: Concept, Paintbrush, Pen & Pencil and the Basic set.

These all have unique styles and really help to define a variety of digital drawing and painting work.

Certainly worth a peek if you want a massive pack filled with hundreds of custom Krita brushes to wade through.

GDquest Krita Brushes

I frequently mention the incredible GDquest team. They release free tutorials and design assets online to help aspiring game artists & designers create their dream projects.

One such example is this GDquest brush pack designed exclusively for Krita.

This is a freemium alternative to their game art brush pack that does cost money. But it’s not needed to get the pro brush set considering how much you get in the free version.

The current bundle is in v7.0 and you can download the brush pack totally free from this page. It’s updated frequently with new brushes and bug fixes so check back often.

And if you’ve never used brushes before don’t worry! There’s a small guide towards the bottom of that page showing you how to install new brushes on Krita.

Comics Brushes Bundle

Digital painting is often the realm of cartooning, storyboarding, and web comics. That’s what makes this brush pack so darn fun.

It’s designed to mimic traditional cartooning tools like pens and brushes for classic comics or graphic novels.

Every brush works at 300 DPI so you can design work in high-def print quality or design for digital screens(or both!). The main DA page has a small sample of the brushes you get in the pack—nothing major but definitely a nice selection for anyone looking to launch their own webcomic.

Also for those who have never used DeviantArt before: the brush download link is near the upper-right corner of the screen. You’ll see a button that says “download” with a total KB file size underneath.

Radian1 Brushpack

Here’s another great brush set released on DeviantArt by user radian1. As you can imagine, it’s got some nice stuff inside.

Note the difference here is that you can’t download the brushes right from DA. Instead the creator has them hosted on Google Drive so you’ll need to visit that link and click “brushes” to download.

The cool part is that Radian1 actually has a bunch of goodies in this pack. You’ll find custom patterns, gradients, and even workspaces you can download for free.

This individual brush pack is mostly geared towards painting and it requires Krita v3.2 or later.

Worth checking out if you’re mostly into digital painting or want to get into it.

Charcoal Pencil Brushes

David Revoy pops up again with another brilliant Krita brush pack.

This time it’s focused on charcoal pencil marks designed as custom brushes.

Not everyone has a big need for this kind of brush set, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with actual charcoal work.

Still, this pack of 3 brushes definitely feels like a useful addition to any Krita drawing session.

Easy to install and super easy to use in your digital drawings. The brushes range from super thin & accurate to very thick & painterly so there’s lots of room to play around.

Painterly Mix Brushes

If you’d rather go for a set of painterly brushes modeled after real bristle brushes then take a look a this brush set. This is another pack from David and it’s also a small one.

The brushes were designed for Krita 2.9 but you can run them on any version above that.

Inside the pack you’ll get a handful of brushes that David often uses to paint the backgrounds for his webcomic series Pepper&Carrot.

The real magic here is the blending styles for working with opaque colors that feel like real techniques for color mixing. Definitely a set worth adding into your Krita toolkit.

Krita Modular Brushset V4

With over 120+ brush presets and dozens of custom styles I really have to praise the Krita Modular Brushset for its ingenuity.

This comes from DeviantArt creator GrindGod and the entire pack + demos is a massive download(just over 34 MB). It’s packed with some incredibly valuable brushes and it works with Krita 2.8 or above.

Now a new v5 set was released a little ways back and that’s compatible with Krita 2.9+. However that DA page doesn’t have any previews so it’s harder to see what you’re getting.

Rest assured this brush pack has a little bit of everything. Form fountain pen styles all the way to loose worn-out paint brush marks, this is one brush set that I definitely recommend trying.

It’s worth noting that the v5 does seem to have all the v4 brushes too, just with some updates & new additions. So if you’re gonna download the Modular Brushset I do recommend grabbing version 5.

Watercolor Brush Set

Digital artist Vasco Alexander Basque created a set of custom watercolor brushes just for Krita users.

There’s a decent collection of brush styles here with some featuring dabbed/splatter brushes, others a little more refined and controlled.

All of them feel true to the process of watercoloring.

If you’ve never done any watercolor work before maybe try small exercises in Krita using this brush pack.

It certainly won’t feel the same when using a tablet but you can get a feel for how the brushes work. The pack is free to grab from GitHub and it’s compatible with all versions of Krita 2.8+.

Worth noting the brushes were designed fairly small with a size range of 30px-100px(mentioned in the brush pack notes). But you can still see good results at 200% or 300% above those size limits.

Raghavendra Brush Pack

Mumbai illustrator Raghavendra Kamath published a nice brush pack that’s been online for quite a while dating back to Krita 2.0.

These brushes may be quite a few years old but they’re surprisingly versatile. That’s one of the main reasons they’re in this list: I still think they’re valuable to newer digital artists.

Inside you’ll find a handful of brush styles like sponge brushes, custom pens, and even a few stamp-style brushes.

The entire set was released as open source on GitHub so that’s the best place to download a copy. I haven’t found any new updates from Raghavendra’s brush set, but even this older edition is worth trying just to see what you think.

Jackpack Krita Bundle

I just recently stumbled onto the Jackpack Krita brush bundle that’s fully up-to-date with the newest upcoming Krita release(4.0.0).

All of the brushes will work just fine on older versions but if you’re running v2.8 or below it’s better to test them first.

All of these brushes were designed with pixel-perfect strokes in mind so you can resize them to your needs. But not all brushes support mirror symmetry so if you use that a lot you’ll have to play around to see what works.

You can grab the whole brush set from the Gumroad link and once again it’s a free download. If you want to offer a donation that’s fine, but you can nab this awesome brush set without paying a penny.

Nylnook Krita Brushes Pack v2

So this Nylnook brush pack is just awesome. It’s a lesser-known pack offering about 36 brushes for digital artists.

Some of these brushes mimic traditional pen & paper while others are geared towards digital work. The full pack was released for free on the open source platform GitLab(visible through Framagit).

Nylnook’s brush set was updated to v2 fixing a few bugs and adding a few new brushes. The v2 update is absolutely worth getting but it requires Krita 3.0.1 or higher.

You’ll find full details about the brushes, the techniques, and the install instructions on both the Framagit page and the original blog post.

I do think this pack would be great for beginners but it’ll take some time getting used to it. Give this pack a shot to see how it feels but if you’re not a huge fan then try David Revoy’s brushkit as an alternative.

Minimalist Brush Pack

Here’s a very small and simple set of brushes created by DA user Aliciane(Elésiane Huve). She works as a freelance illustrator & digital painter who often sticks to Krita for digital art.

This brush pack was derived from David’s pack but it does have a few changes that makes this worth testing. Notably certain brushes have altered line widths, opacity sensitivity, and line cleanliness when making marks with more pressure.

You can get the whole pack working with Krita 2.8 or higher so it should run smoothly for everyone. If not you should really update your Krita!

Some of the more unique brushes in this set are the smudge brushes & a custom move tool using the brush pack.

It comes with 8 brushes in total and you can download the full pack on this page.

Aldys Brush Pack

So Aldys Brush Pack has been around for a while since it was originally released for Krita 2.3.1. It might be one of the oldest brush packs in this entire list.

But many of these brushes are incredibly basic making them worth a try if the other packs feel too complicated. That goes double for newbies who are just trying to learn the Krita software from scratch.

This pack includes a little bit of everything from pens to airbrushes, oil brushes, smudged graphite and even some pattern brushes.

The biggest downside here is that these brushes are so outdated. If you do professional work then I highly recommend sticking to some of the newer brushes mentioned earlier.

I only mention Aldys set for anyone new to Krita, new to digital painting, or as a simple alternative to other pattern brushes.

My personal recommendation for the best Krita brush set has to be David Revoy’s brushes.

That pack is constantly updated with new features & new brushes to support the latest version of Krita. Not to mention his brushes are super high quality so you’ll have no trouble making professional-level work.

But have another look over this list and see what you think!

New Krita brushes come out all the time so this is far from an exhaustive list.

Although I think these free brush packs offer a great starting point to improve your Krita brush library.

Free painting programs are great for newer artists. You can learn digital painting without shelling out money for premium software like Photoshop.

We recently covered free art tutorials for GIMP which is another free painting program.

And in this post I’ll focus on Krita. It’s a free open source painting program for artists who want to draw & paint digitally without breaking the bank.

And since Krita is totally free you’ll find a bunch of tutorials out there also released 100% free.

Setup Wacom Tablet with Krita

The very first step for anyone learning to paint on the computer is learning to connect their tablet.

You need a drawing tablet to work with these programs. But they all connect a little differently and they all have their own settings panels.

If you check out this video you’ll find a step-by-step guide to connect your tablet into Krita.

This video specifically covers Wacom tablets but they process is often similar for other brands like Parblo and Huion.

Either way you’ll need to connect a tablet before you can paint.

If you’ve already done this on your own, great!

If not then try to follow along and make sure you’ve got it working before moving onto anything else.

Setup Krita for Digital Painting

When you open Krita for the first time it can be intimidating.

You can find some guides to the interface online but they’re not perfect. And if you’re more of a visual learner you’ll probably want to follow a video anyways.

This video is pretty long spanning over 20 minutes of detailed info on the Krita interface.

Anyone who’s brand new to the software should check this out and see what you can learn.

It’s possibly the most important intro to Krita since it teaches you the GUI specifically for painting.

Introduction to Krita

Here’s another really cool introductory video recorded & narrated by artist Sara Tepes.

This offers a smaller introduction to Krita with simpler explanations for all the tools.

It certainly runs a bit shorter totaling around 12 minutes long. It’s still a great follow-up for picking up Krita since you can get through it fast and pinpoint areas of the GUI you need to study more.

Phil Waclawski: Krita Basics

You might want a tutorials that’s incredibly detailed to learn all about Krita from start to finish.

In that case you’ll really wanna watch this presentation by professor & Linux master Phil Waclawski. He presented this hour-long guide to Krita in front of the Phoenix Linux Users Group.

Not sure if I mentioned this before but Krita runs on Linux. One of the very few painting programs that works outside of the Mac & Windows environments.

Yet even if you aren’t familiar with Linux you can still learn a lot from this video.

It’ll cover everything about Krita from brushes to color selection and creating/managing open documents. A fantastic presentation for all digital artists but especially useful for those running Linux.

What Brushes To Use In Krita

Getting started with a new program means learning everything from scratch.

This includes all the interface components along with assets like brushes. Digital painting is pointless without the right brushes.

Thankfully this video covers some of the best brushes you can use when just starting in Krita.

It’s a fairly quick video just under 10 minutes long and it comes from the wildly popular YouTube channel Mart’s Struggle with Drawing.

Whether you’re brand new to digital painting or already a pro just diving into Krita, either way these brush recommendations will put you on the right track to success.

Color Mixing Brushes Tutorial

Here’s another brush tutorial but with a focus on mixing colors with brushes.

Every painting program works a bit differently when it comes to mixing colors. Krita is super easy once you get it down into a workflow.

But this can take time and the fastest way to speed this up is through a tutorial.

Try following this guide from GDQuest as part of their full Krita series and see what you can learn.

Like everything here it’s best to keep what’s useful, discard the rest, and play around on your own to figure out how you want to paint.

Krita Layers Tutorial

Photoshop’s layers panel is perhaps the most-used feature for all design work. It’s a necessity to create so many effects whether you’re editing a photo or painting an illustration.

Krita has its own layers feature and this video guide will get you up-to-speed on it.

The video is only 6 minutes long so you can work through the material fast. It’s also pretty detailed so you don’t need much prior experience to fully grasp the concept of layers.

Just remember that working with layers is crucial to painting great pieces. The sooner you get familiar with layers the faster you can pick up Krita.

Painting with Krita – Getting Started

GDquest has a ton of great videos on their channel but it’s not a Krita-only channel.

I’ve tried to curate their best stuff here, but if you follow any of their tutorials this one is a must-watch.

It’s 7 minutes in total and shows you how to start a digital painting with the software.

You’ll learn how to work with Krita’s brush tool, how to swap colors fast, and how to flesh out your ideas on-the-fly. Krita is a flexible program if you can learn how it works.

That’s the main goal of this video in a nutshell.

How To Paint In Krita

Another “how to get started” video that I really like is this one by JennaDrawing. She teaches you how to dive into Krita and get moving the right way.

I’m sure you’re eager to start throwing brush strokes willy-nilly. But you’ll get much more controlled work if you learn how to create documents, manage brushes, and alter settings like layer opacity.

Jenna covers all that stuff in this 15-minute video so it’s a great choice to bookmark if you’re looking to start painting.

Note this vid shows Krita as it looks on Windows but the lessons apply to all operating systems.

Understanding Krita’s Blending Modes

There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with blending modes and layers.

When this word pops up most people think of Photoshop and photo editing. Yet digital painting has just as much room for blend modes if you know how to use them.

Take a peek at this tutorial spanning just under 12 minutes on Krita blend modes.

The lessons are really basic and it doesn’t show much practical use for blending in a real-world scenario.

Yet these techniques can apply to your work if you’re feeling a bit adventurous on a new panting.

A Comic Page From A to Z

Ever wanted to launch your own webcomic or create a digital comic book?

With Krita you can do just that. And with this tutorial you can follow David Revoy as he creates a full comic page from start to finish.

This is a super long video totaling almost 2 hours. It also has no real narration and parts of the video are sped up to reduce time.

I’d recommend this more for semi-experienced artists who want to move into Krita for comics.

You can follow David’s process and try mimicking this yourself to nail the workflow.

Square In Perspective Using Krita

Now this tutorial is pretty unique since it’s focused more on basic fundamental skills.

Drawing a perfect square becomes so much easier with practice. Websites like Draw A Box make this even simpler.

If you want to draw digitally then this video might help. It shows you how to create perspective grids and work within Krita to draw accurate shapes in near-perfect perspective.

With 20 minutes of runtime it’s a somewhat lengthy tutorial just for drawing boxes.

However it can prove useful when accuracy is more important than creativity.

Painting Hair in Krita

Many artists would agree that hair is the toughest subject to paint.

You have to look at hair more as an object rather than individual strands. But you also want to paint hair that isn’t an object so it looks realistic.

It’s a tough cookie to crack.

And if you’re struggling with hair in Krita this video might help. It’s around 18 minutes of instruction with step-by-step guidance for painting beautiful hair from scratch.

I always recommend drawing from life to master any subject and that still remains true.

But I also think digital work is completely different than traditional work. This tutorial can help you get comfortable with the digital side.

Lineart Tips With Krita

Another brilliant video from artist David Revoy as he shares line art tips working in Krita.

One of the best ways to get started painting is to work on your lineart. You can either trace scanned drawings or work digitally first, then on a new layer start painting.

It gives you way more room to get expressive while remaining true to the original line work.

David’s video is fairly short but also lengthy enough to build your confidence laying down lines.

Digital Painting Game Assets

I’d argue this video tutorial is one of my absolute favorites in the entire list.

Artist Douglas Lopes is fairly new to the world of digital art, yet you’d never second guess his skills based on his work.

You can find some awesome tuts on his channel and my absolute favorite has to be this gem.

It’s around 25 minutes long and shows you how to paint a digital game asset from scratch. Specifically a rock design with a sigil of some kind.

All work is done using Krita with a brilliant workflow for newer artists to watch.

Along with the subject matter being useful to aspiring concept artists, I also really like the tutorial because it’s just plain simple. Beginners can follow along with relative ease and build confidence painting in Krita.

Turn Pencil Sketch into Digital Painting

Scanning a drawing and importing that to Krita offers a foundation for your paintings.

But once you get the file scanned in you may not know where to go next. That’s where this awesome video comes into play.

It’s a detailed guide for anyone who wants to move from traditional to digital using Krita.

Our friendly artist Mart is back again with more advice for mastering painting. This time you’ll learn how to work on top of a scanned drawing and use that line work as a template.

Granted this is pretty short totaling around 6 minutes but it’s worth a watch if you prefer doing your sketches traditionally.

Coloring & Skin in Krita

So this video by Griatch Art is actually a timelapse from start to finish.

The learning comes primarily from watching their movements, their tool choices, and how they mix colors for skin tones.

Learning to finish a drawing is one of the toughest things for beginning artists. This goes double for digital work because it’s so easy to close the document and start over.

If you need a narrated guide this probably won’t help.

But I think it’s worth saving if you feel comfortable painting digitally and want to take your finished pieces to the next level.

Let’s Animate A Ball In Krita 3

You might be surprised to learn that Krita isn’t just a painting program. It also supports real animation work if you want to do 2D animation.

And what’s the easiest thing to animate? Many animation students will have the same answer: a bouncing ball.

This video is the best introduction to animation with Krita. It teaches you the entire process over 22 minutes from starting a new document to creating each frame and polishing along the way.

It’s probably the best intro for anyone new to Krita who also wants to specialize in animation work.

Is it gonna teach you everything? Of course not.

But it will cover the basics of animation in Krita with lots of detail. And really that’s all you need to get started.

Make A Simple Animation In Krita 3

Here’s one more animation tutorial taught using Krita 3 and some basic techniques.

Kritax

This one is a bit shorter with only 10 minutes of runtime. A very simple intro perfect to watch alongside the above tutorial.

I’d argue the bouncing ball is better to start with, then watch this as a follow-up once you’re done.

Also have a look at the suggestions in YouTube’s sidebar for this video. You may be surprised just how many Krita animation tutorials are out there(and totally free!).

Self-Portrait in Krita

Let’s wrap up this list with a fun video from infamous YouTube artist Sycra.

He’s been publishing tutorials for years now and he’s one of the more well-known teachers on YouTube.

In this brief video he creates a self-portrait from scratch using Krita. He doesn’t exactly show you the step-by-step process but he does explain what he’s doing along the way.

Krita App

Since it’s in real-time and narrated you can learn a lot from this video.

Just make sure you try this on your own because that’s really the best way to learn.

Granted if you want to paint portraits of others then I might recommend Proko’s course on portrait drawing. All those lessons apply digitally so it’s a nice place to start.

But if you just want to learn Krita and make awesome paintings I totally recommend Sycra’s video to get you inspired and raring to go.

Hotmail.com