WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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9 comments
I made several studies on this artwork :
\- playing around to come back to life my old OC named "Litchee" ( main character from one of my first comic project , as a teenager )
\- testing a new way to conceive my shading ; from the light bouncing off the orange tissue background environment
- creasing the blacks values on the picture and keep a high-contrast
- studying also this grayish skin mid tone I wanted to get for my vision of the dark elf ( drows )
I kept 'unfinished' parts because I'm not really satisfied with the result, and prefer to move-on to another study for now.
_software : Krita on Linux Mint KDE_
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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49 comments
**Update:** _Spanish version [available on Chalo Blogg](https://chaloblogg.wordpress.com/2016/06/26/calibrando-la-presion-del-lapiz-de-una-tableta-wacom-con-krita-tutorial/ "available on Chalo Blogg" )._
## Intro
If you were my student, or attended one of my workshops or conferences ; this tutorial will probably sound familiar to you. Indeed, I often start my talks with a brief _"how-to calibrating correctly the pressure"_ session. I often see a lot of digital-painters ignoring this step. Ignoring this, make them struggle when changing of tablet hardware, have not consistent glazing ability and poor digital freehand line qualities. Let's get in.
## Pressure ?
The pressure value - in digital painting - is driven by a sensor inside your stylus in contact to your stylus tip. In a nut-shell : the more you press on the tip, the more high value will be transmitted to your computer. This value helps software as Krita, Gimp or Mypaint to give extra feeling to the traditional tools.
Pressure also exist in traditional media, this ball-pen ( photo under ) have variations of stroke size and opacity depending the pressure. So, when receiving high pressure, the ball tip of the ball-pen crease the paper and flatten it, making easier the ink deposit process and creating larger and darker lines. However, when the pressure is low, the ball have difficulties to roll or getting contact to the surface of the paper, making 'ghost' holes in the stroke, and revealing the texture of the paper. The resulting stroke is thinner and even often light-grey.
_a ballpen 'made in France' and real life pressure example_
With a Wacom stylus ; it's different : we are not going to crease the surface of our tablet, or lay down any ink. So, the little spring linked to a sensor inside our stylus 'hear' how much pressure is done, and return a value. Our software, here 'Krita' digest those values and according to the brush preset selected and settings interpret a stroke on the canvas. Easy :-)
## How many pressure level needed ?
A common marketing bullshit strategy is to sell with upgrading any specifications numbers. Harder, faster, better, stronger... and Wacom also did it ; starting with 512 then 1024 then 2048 level of pressure. ( I bet soon we will have to count this in MP or GP, MegaPressure or GigaPressure ).
Ok, I stop useless rant here, because getting more 'level of pressure' can't hurt and even can be a good thing , it's not really something important , in my opinion. I have here tablets with 512, 1024, 2048 and the reality is with any of this levels ; you'll can't perform more variation than this :
13 level of opacity done with the same brush preset ! and to be fair, most of my stroke are similar. I guess I can only manage up to 6 or 8 level of pressures decided with my hand. It does sound low, but it's already a lot. Most artist I see on videos have only 3 : the light stroke, the middle one, the full one. This was performed on a Intuos4 Medium with 2048 level of pressure, and I can do the same with a Bamboo fun with 512 , and a Cintiq21Ux with 1024 level of pressure.
I had issue testing line-art with 256 level of pressure on really old tablets ; 256 is not enough and affect transition if pressure is mapped to the line width. But above 512 , I feel Ok with any task. So , as a rule of thumb when I buy a tablet : ** pressure level must superior or equal 512.** It isn't hard nowadays to fill this specification requirement.
## Calibration : Why ?
When you open your computer at morning, take your stylus and start a first stroke , do you know exactly where is your mid-pressure ? Probably not, because this feeling change. **Stress, health, energy and excitement can affect your way to express the pressure, and change daily your muscular approach of the stylus , so your "pressure" skill**. Some day you will feel 'soft' and will have hand only expressing low levels of pressure ; and some days you'll feel like a warrior and put a lot of pressure on the stylus.
So ; you understood it ; you need to make the computer understand what is for you a light stroke, the mid one, and a full pressure ; as well as all the in-between. Calibrating will help you to express light strokes, and full strokes without putting to much effort in your hands. If you have pain in hand after painting for an hour, it's probably because you need to put too much pressure to get the effect you want with a hand used to low pressure. If you scratch often the surface of your tablet , it's probably because too much pressure. Or, the inverse, if you feel every brush presets are too sensitive and do too much effect for you, you probably have a calibration problem.
## Calibration : How-to test
The process takes less than 2 minutes , and can be done when you feel pressure do not respond as you are used to.
First, you need to open a white canvas and select black color and a brush with a linear curve on the pressure. On my last brushkit ( version 3 ) the preset **'Basic Rounded'** as on the picture bellow is ideal for this, and **already setup to do the calibration** :
_'Basic-2 Opacity' from the default Krita brushes is a brush preset ideal to do a speed calibration of your pressure_
Now you'll try to paint a similar line with it, in one stroke making progressively increasing your pressure :
Stroke exemple with _'Basic Rounded' and pressure_
If you see while testing you can't really draw light grey ; or reach full blacks too early compare to what you expect, it's mean you have to tweak the calibration. If you can perform it with ease ; then you don't need to calibrate today :-)
## Calibration : How-to change it in Krita
The tool is available on Krita since old 2.3 versions thanks to [Lukáš Tvrdý](http://lukast.mediablog.sk/log/ "Lukáš Tvrdý" ) ( note : feature also available in Mypaint ) . So, you can manage a 'pressure input global curve'. This will allow us to set a custom curve to define how sensitive we want our pressure to be.
[](data/images/blog/2013/08/pressure-calibration/calibrating_pressure-03-krita-tool_revoy.jpg)
_a curve tool in Preferences > Tablet config in Krita ( click to enlarge )_
I will assume here that you are not comfortable with reading curves. So, here is a little lesson on how to read them ( feel free to skip if you know )
**Reading sensor/input curves :**
On the horizontal ( frame A ) you have your stylus pressure with on left light amount of pressure , and on the right a strong amount of pressure.
On the vertical ( frame B ) , you have the value Krita will attribute. Low value on the bottom or higher on the top.
So, **the curve define a relation between your level of pressure and the input values**.
On the example under, a 'linear' curve will just do nothing : low pressure will be mapped to low values, and increase in a linear way to high pressure mapped to high values.
To do a better calibration , you will need to move the nodes on the curves. If you click the curve between two nodes, you will create a new nodes, and to remove one, drag and drop it outside the graph.
Here under 4 example of curves, with a picture ( from left to right ) :
**No-high-pressure :** It mean the top value of pressure for Krita will happen when you press only 75% of the stylus. I use it on my Cintiq 21UX , this prevent me to put too much pressure and scratch the fragile surface. I also use this on a regular Intuos3 A4 , because I like to reach the 'pure' 100% pressure stroke easily without making with my hand too much effort.
**Fix low-pressure-problems : **I don't use this, but poeple with bad driver, or old stylus sensor might be interested ; this exclude low pressure infos ( the curve/line is starting a bit after the entry point on the lower bottom left corner ). Ideal for the syndrom of bugged stylus who 'keep writing' even without pressing it.
**Soft : **A curve where the pressure does really fast high effect ; giving all presets a very sensitive feeling and fast full 100% pressure effects.
**Hard : **Inverse than soft , this curve is good for too much sensitive tablets, and you'll have more control over the light pressure, but need to press more for getting a stroke with full effect. It's the one I use on the Intuos4 Medium.
And here are the curve I use for my two main tablets here on my two workstations ; depending the day I bend more or less the main part of the line to be more soft or more hard, depending if I'm tired , or full of energy.
So, tweak the curve in the preferences , then close the dialog, retest your 'Basic' brush on the canvas , and repeat the process till you find a good setting, where you can easily most of all the opacity shade of grey the preset does, **and feel to can predict it**.
Krita curves are not easy to manipulate, and you 'll probably need to play a bit with moving the nodes , adding some, removing, etc... to find a way to have the curve you wanted. Good luck !
## Conclusion :
I hope you'll find the best setting for your tablet , and feel empowered with controlling the pressure of your brush-presets. Here, because I'm used to handle multiple tablet hardware, it's a **very important feature and setup**. Most of my sketches does an intensive usage of pressure variations ( ex : sketch under ). I use pressure variations to make construction light lines and drawing while keeping the same brush preset selected. I also use it when painting for glazing and opacity. So, it's important for me to know how to manage the pressure.
I hope you found this large tutorial informative !
_... yes, DBZ haircuts, I can't help myself.... :-D _
## Link for further readings :
* [A thread from Snowfly on Polycount about pressure management](http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77043), (2010, English).
* [A blog-post by Ghevan about pressure, curves, aspect ratio](http://colorathis.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/linux-configuracion-wacom/ ), (2012, Spanish).
* [The very complete Arch wiki about setting Wacom tablets](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wacom_Tablet), (English).
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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44 comments
**Update:** _This resources is outdated and unmaintained : it probably won't work as designed with recent version of Krita. Check the 'extras' category to find the most recent brushes._
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_"Un bon artisan prends soin de ses outils" _
A french proverb roughly translated by "a good worker take care of his tools".
This is still into this spirit I keep care of my brushkit ( and _in extensio_ to the softwares I use ).
I also share my ressources while a lot of greedy artist on proprietary still protect their own because I know you can get my pen/brush/tools for free ...
That's not where my skill is...
Here is my new and 3rd brush kit for Krita :-)
## New thumbnails
All the thumbnails were totally redone to match a new standard document I worked on with [Timothée Giet](http://timotheegiet.com/blog/ "Timothée Giet" ) (aka Animtim) and [Ramón Miranda](http://www.ramonmiranda.com/ "Ramón Miranda" ). This document is on the development wiki of the Krita project: . Now, there is standard backgrounds, composition and colors to make all the brushkit consistent. The goal: have appeal and consistency to merge external brushkit as mine into the main version. So, don't be surprise to see some of this brush -maybe not them all- being a part of the default Krita brushes.
## How to use
**Airbrushes:**
Compare to the V2, my airbrush with blending modes are back (you can find brush with an embedded blending mode with a little gear/sun symbol on the top-left of the icon.).
A. A normal one, reworked to be fast with big size, and as smooth as I could for this speed.
B. a 'Color HSY' one, this one will not destroy the value, only change the Hue, ideal to color, or with a grey hue, to desaturate
C. An overlay airbrush; this one can darken or lighten; depending if you select a color with a value over 50% or under 50% ; I use it to vivid a bit my colors, to darken some corners to get an easy vignette effect, or to do little halo of light here and there.
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**Speedpainting brush**
I also added a new brush I found convenient to doodle; it has a bit a flat plastic feeling, but works well at blocking value with pure area of grey. It has sensor on size and opacity, but capped with a minimum amount to not be too much expressive too.
**Block and Hairy brush**
When I'm out the focus point of the artwork, I like to brush the details with a preset doing a sort of rake/bristle texture. One of the two, 'block' takes advantage of a new feature in 2.8dev ; ['fan corners' made by Dmitry Kazakov](http://dimula73.blogspot.fr/2013/08/krita-lime-28prealpha-new-features.html "'fan corners' made by Dmitry Kazakov" ) .
**Move tool**
I'm happy this time, because it's years I try to tweak the 'deform brush engine' to obtain a sort of Iwarp brush. Now I got one, and I can tweak proportion on my sketch without getting too much blur. Talking about preset looking like tool, I also added a 'clone tool' to the preset.
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**Drawing pen & Screentones**
I don't use Screentones often, it's more like a 'proof-of-concept' brush preset, but I like to keep around. And about 'Drawing pen', I can't live without. Every sketch / drawing I do with Krita start for me with this little thin rounded brush with a high expression on the size and opacity. It allows me to draw various level of sketch details with the same brush. It's an adaptation of my old Mypaint brush kit.
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**Experimental basic**
The experimental brush engine does the same effect as the famous Al.chemy software. I still use it or to doodle, or to speedpaint some hard surface object. All the fun start if you play with it and activate a symmetry mirror on the canvas.
**All the Frottis**
Frottis are thin transparent or semi-transparent glazes rubbed into the ground in the initial phases of an oil painting. From the French term "frotter", meaning "to rub". By the past when I was painting daily with traditional ( acrylic on canvas ), I was an adept of this technic. Using thin layer of pure painting not loaded on a dry brush and rubbing the surface to overlay thin layer of colors.
In an attempt to find back this feeling , I made this presets; with a little of bristle and texture in it. I have a variation with blending mode to speed up my workflow; 'addition' to enlight, and 'multiply/product' to darken, glaze and shade.
It also happen I sketch directly with 'Frottis' brush.
**Detailer soft and Bristles** ( soft or textured )
'Detailer soft' was recreated from my Mypaint brushkit. This is the brush helping me to paint thin details or subtle lines. It happen to me to keep this brush during hours when detailing an artwork. The bristles brushes, does various effects helping to get textured strokes, and more life and unpredictable rendering.
**Texturers**
In version 2 of my brushkit , I was exited by the new 2.7 texture features, and added a lot of textured brushes. Finally, I saw I prefer to keep 2 preset only ; a thin and a large one, and change the texture on the fly directly on the panel depending my needs...
Other brush presets ( Erasers / Splatters / Basics ) are pretty easy to understand, and I didn't felt the need to make here other visual for them. They just do what you expect they do...
## Download
The brushkit ZIP can be downloaded here : [2013-08-14_deevadkrita-V3.zip](data/documents/2013-08-14_deevadkrita-V3.zip)
It should be compatible with 2.7 and 2.8dev. ( note: _Block.kpp_ preset might be problematic on 2.7, as it use a 2.8dev feature : fan corner ... not tested )
**License:** the brushkit itself and thumbnails is released under the [WTFPL 2.0](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL#Version_2 "WTFPL 2.0" ) (compatible Public Domain and CC-0).
## Install
Unzip the downloaded zip , and paste the three folder 'brushes' 'paintoppreset' and 'patterns' into your Krita user preference directory. Under Mint 14 KDE, the Krita pref are located here : **/home/<username>/.kde/share/apps/krita/**
Have a good painting time !
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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18 comments
[youtube]dsDgtIWXLXE[/youtube]
* Video link :
* High-res on deviant-art : [http://fav.me/d6ernnp](http://deevad.deviantart.com/art/Aqua-Dream-387602053)
Artwork title : "Aqua Dream" by David Revoy, www.davidrevoy.com
Music : "Drops of H2O" by J. Lang , www.ccmixter.org
Digital painting software : Krita
Operating System : Linux Mint , KDE
Video editing : Kdenlive
Real time to completion : 3 h 20 min
Final artwork : Available on my deviantArt http://fav.me/d6ernnp
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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14 comments
It's now or never, grow your own idea!
Think and get your own opinion before someone else think for you.
[info] Update 2022-10-13: Artwork license update, it's now CC-By instead of CC-By-Nc-Nd (but mind some trademark are quoted on all the symbols all around this artwork), I also updated the resolution to the max to almost near lossless quality compression. Click on the artwork to enlarge (6.1MiB). Also, it is now available [on the Redbubble shop](https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/127884366?ref=studio-promote ). [/info]
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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114 comments
I decided to write a blog post to silence the rare but existing gossips saying I'm using 100% open-source workflow because I'm ... ... a poor artist (¬\_¬)
It's wrong: **I use open-source since 2009 as a personal choice**. Let me tell you, how and why it did happen. _(and sorry in advance for my english)_
_photo : I'm moving soon, and while I'm cleaning, I found in the bottom of my bookshelves my old software licenses. Probably more than 3000€ of software here. I took a quick photo on the ground to keep a souvenir._
## Back in the day...
Before using open-source, **I was strict on buying every licenses** I needed for my freelance activities. I started with the Photoshop Element 2.0 boxed with my first Graphire Wacom tablet, but also Gimp 2.2, Artrage Free edition and Artweaver. I did a lot of artworks like that and was happy. I didn't wanted to install hacked/pirated full version, even if a whole part of internet is encouraging into this practice...
With the years, and commissions, **I had to buy Photoshop CS2 for my publishers as a requirement to send CMYK** illustrations. 799€ for a feature, that was hard, but at this time, no alternative or open-source software could do it (nowaday, there is 2 tools available: 'CMYKtools', 'Krita' ).
Then with the years, I purchased other Softwares; as Corel Painter, or Manga Studio, and won also many other ( not on the photo ) into contests.
**Then happened the bad experience...** I bought a new computer, delivered with the shiny new Windows Vista operating system, and discovered I couldn't reinstall Xp on it; the motherboard didn't had a driver made for it. I had to do a lot of horrible hack to make all my software running on it, but it wasn't stable as it was on Xp anymore. I had to reboot almost twice a day (╯︵╰,) .
So, I decided to sell this Vista computer, and bought back one of the last machine existing in shop delivered with XP to run smoothly my software.
Oh; a solution existed to make all the software running bug-free on Vista; update pack. It was expensive, and also not bringing any new relevant features other than just being Vista compatible.
So, I thought all of this circus couldn't work on long term, and wasn't happy. On the new computer, the Linux compatibility was near perfection and it was a luck back in 2008 for my early Linux dual boot test. So, I had a successful dual boot with Linux Mint and could pull my hair **learning the hard way**: compiling Wacom driver, modifying Xorg, doing Xsetwacom script (all a joy you don't have to normally do now on Nowaday Linux distribution). Yes, at this time, having a Wacom was really hard to manage, and I had a small Cintiq 12Wx...
Then came [the Sintel open-movie project](http://www.davidrevoy.com/article45/sintel-concept-arts "the Sintel open-movie project" ) and my involvement in it as an art-director. Doing pre-productions artworks with open-source wasn't forced by the Blender Foundation (even if warmly encouraged, of course). But again, **I made the personal choice to persevere** with what existed about 2D. I started to test everything to find a workflow using Mypaint and Gimp-painter ; later documented into [my first DVD Chaos&Evolution](http://www.davidrevoy.com/article44/artworks-from-my-dvd-chaos-evolutions "my first DVD Chaos&Evolution" ).
So, I switched my machine to a full open-source system around 2009, and decided to keep it at the end of the project when came back home with this thinking, "**open-source could work on the long term**". But let be honest: my change to open-source made a regression on my workflow about many topic ( features, performances, easiness ) and I kept Photoshop Cs2 running on Wine for a long period to deal with CMYK and files from publisher.
Time passed, as well as hundreds of bug reports, meetings, thousands of commits done by dedicated and passionate developers from all around the world. Mypaint, Krita, Gimp, G'mic and Linux system way to handle Wacom tablets changed a lot and are nowadays way easier, performant and featured than back 2008. And most of all : I really like the independence I get about it : I can install it on laptops, every machine, upgrade, downgrade, fine tuning it. **This independence is gold. **The con ; I'm now dependent of hardware 'linux' compatible. Witch is not easy to find, and not well documented...
**Am I happy about this personal choice ?** Yes :-) and I can without any remorse put my old software license in a box for long term storage, just to show to my (hypothetic and not yet existing) grant-children what were... the proprietary 2D software I started with.
**And you, why are you using mostly open-source ?**
