ImagineFX - Issue 179

LEARN YOUR WAY

AROUND KRITA

Sara Tepes continues her series on the free painting program

by taking a tour of Krita’s tools and its pared-back workspace

Krita is one of the best free painting programs

available and includes a great variety of tools and

features. While Photoshop has features that can be

useful from painting to photo retouching to photo

manipulation, too many options create a tough

learning curve for a digital painter.

Krita keeps its interface painter friendly with a clean style and

minimal distractions. Tools are accessibly placed, and most of the

window is dedicated to the canvas. Since Krita has such a gentle

learning curve, it’s easy – and important – to familiarise yourself

with its features before diving into the painting process.

1

Creating a new document

Open up a new document by going to File>New. To control the size of the canvas, you can select from one of the templates in the

Predefined drop-down menu, or either change the dimensions yourself. Choose either pixels or inches for your dimensions and set the canvas

size to the ratio you want. I prefer a larger file size, no smaller than 3,000px on the shortest size but no larger than 7,000px on the longest. Finally,

set your Resolution either to 300 or 600; the higher resolution, the greater quality for the final image.

Core Skills: Part 2

Sara Tepes

LOCATION: US

Sara is an illustrator who

works with both digital

and traditional mediums,

and enjoys making

YouTube videos teaching

on various art topics.

http://www.sarucatepes.com

Artist

PROFILE

My default canvas sizes

are either on a 1:1 ratio

or a 4:5. Both are easy

to print and great for

posting on Instagram.

Workshops