Krita – Page 2 – Darkcloud Xero's Online Shop

Sorry I’ve been gone for a while, but I have a couple of artworks drawn and ready to show. Lately I have been cleaning my files on my computer and categorizing my references so that I can find them easily and efficiently but there were thousands of folders I had to go through. I still have over two thousand I still have to categorize but I’m getting there.

The first artwork I will showcase after this absence is Shampoo from Ranma 1/2. I really like her as a character and love her character design. This is a bit silly, but you know back when I saw this in Mexico when I was a gradeschooler we called anime Chinese cartoons. We were quite ignorant back then … but to be fair, it also didn’t help that a lot of 80s anime and some in the 90s had a Chinese aesthetic (plus we couldn’t differentiate between the writing in the credits which was left in it’s original kanji+hiragana-katakana format). So when I eventually learned that anime was Japanese here in the States I was confused about the fact that a lot of Chinese elements were present in anime. Eventually I learned that Japan went through a craze where they were greatly influenced by Hong Kong cinema and incorporated a lot of Chinese elements to their stories. This fact made me extremely happy since I was a always a big fan of Hong Kong martial arts films. So when I now see Ranma 1/2 and other Anime I can see some of the influences from the movies I have seen growing up. It’s a great combination really, sad that this era has ended…

By the way tirantes means Suspenders in Spanish.

Here is the final piece:

References used I really liked the flat colors of some of the some of the references I had so I decided to give it a try):

Traditional process, I used bristol paper but it seriously doesn’t take copic markers well. It becomes rather blotchy so I decided to color it digitally in the end.

Here is the digital process. I’m currently using krita, it’s so light and versatile. So far it hasn’t made my Xp Pen quit which has allowed me to continue working at my own work flow. The times it has quit, the pressure sensitivity has turned off but the pen still works. And to make it work again I just have to relaunch Krita and it all returns to normal (this is much better than having to restart my whole computer).

Hope you guys are doing well.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

I was looking into Clip Studio after I saw a video showcasing the ability to have the program auto color one’s line art. And what made it cool was that not only did it seem to work great but one can have a say on the colors used as well. I couldn’t try it out since the trial version doesn’t make it accessible. But there is a website that does the same thing named PaintsChainer so I played around with that for a bit. While I was reading more about Clip Studio I happened to hear about another program that was open source and free named Krita. I have heard of this program before (quite a while ago) but never gave it a chance. So I decided to finally give it a chance. I’m amazed at the amount of tools and options it has. It really does seem to offer (at least from what I have tried so far) everything most pro programs offer.

One other reason I was interested in using Krita is because Photoshop seems to make my tablet drivers quite after working on it for a while, and the only way to make them work again is to restart my pc. What sucks is that sometimes I only make a couple of strokes and the drivers quit on me. This makes working digitally really annoying, time consuming and messes with my work rhythm. Now to be fair I did have too many open tabs on chrome so I’m sure that was causing my pc to use too much memory causing problems.

In any case I’m glad this all culminated in me trying out this program because it’s quite amazing. It has many pen options and works quite well. Most things work like in any other painting program so making the change isn’t hard. I really like the g-pen to draw. One thing I’ve never tried was using the pen pressure to dictate the opacity. I’ts actually quite amazing and intuitive. I think I might prefer using the pen pressure in this way instead of controlling the size of the brush while painting. It gives me a feel that reminds me of how watercolor works.

I’m still not used to the way to color selector works, I prefer the one from Corel and Photoshop (the Coolorus addon one).

As for the drawing it self I wasn’t too sure what to draw so I just began doodling until at some point I decided to draw Sayu. This time though I just wanted to see what would come up if I just did things from memory and imagination. After doing the line art I decided to try out painting with the program and am quite surprised and pleased at how great it feels and works. I highly recommend it specially since it’s free. I’ll see how far I can push the program in some future works. Hopefully my tablet drivers will finally stop crashing as well so I can just draw and paint at my pace without disturbances.

The 1st drawing/painting:

The process:

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Tag: Krita

Shampoo Tirantes

1st Krita drawing Sayu