I Support Krita

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I’m enthusiastic about Krita. Krita is an open source, free painting software that works on GNU/Linux, Mac, and Windows. It’s a full-featured sketching and painting program for artists, with an active community of accessible developers and artists. Krita will replace my proprietary painting/drawing programs such as Artrage, Adobe CC, Corel Painter, and Affinity Photo. I want to be a part of this awesome community as an artist using Krita.

My first step in supporting Krita was to buy the Digital Atelier package from the Krita Shop. The kit includes watercolor, pastel, and oil brushes, and dozens of instructional videos made by digital artist and teacher Ramon Miranda. You can see an overview of the Digital Atelier package in his Youtube video about the Digital Atelier pack.

Chore Day, Aug 10, 2019 - A Message in a Bottle

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Dear Diary, today was chore day. I started the day by cooking up a batch of food for my boys — black bean and sweet potato “burgers”. My youngest boy is a Pomeranian who thinks he’s in charge of the whole world. My other boy is a mature Pug who thinks only about getting his next meal. The Pomeranian hates what I cook. I tell him to get a driver’s license and drive down to the co-op to buy his own food. He ignores me.

Besides cooking dog food today, I reread James Gurney’s Color and Light. This book is a real game changer for me. I can now look at my paintings and see where I’ve abused my color palette. I’ve also learned how to create a color palette that unifies the colors in my paintings. Unfortunately, the colors in my children’s picture book are all over the place. I’ll do what I can to improve them before I publish the book.

If I were marooned on a desert island, I would send out a message in a bottle to every beginning painter. It would go something like this…

If you have any desire to produce paintings that do not expose you as an amateur, learn about color gamuts.

Krita has a built-in gamut mask creator. This screenshot shows that I don’t know how it works…yet! Fortunately, Aaron Rutten has a great video showing how to use the Krita gamut mask tool. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ch3M57N8-o