WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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2 comments
**Video links:**
▶ Peertube: https://peertube.touhoppai.moe/w/6GetvC3grjMRdFooDDMe62
▶ Youtube: https://youtu.be/kisT96h5h80
- 4k Wallpaper: https://www.davidrevoy.com/data/images/blog/2022/2022-12-18_point-of-view.jpg
- Source of the artwork: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/artworks.html
These steps make it easier to make my Digital Painting at the end of 2022, and you'll see many of my artworks with a similar process: a large sketch or storyboard, then a thin temporary line-art, then a silhouette on multi layer, then a color flat, a shading and to finish with a paint-over and post-effect. This is a tutorial doesn't dive into the details, but keeps an overview of the workflow, the goal is to give an idea of the full path and to give tips on the way. I hope showing my recipe will inspire you to start a drawing to test something you'll find interesting and find your own path.
**Timeline:**
- 00:19 Thumbnail (or Sketch)
- 00:57 Drawing
- 01:41 Silhouettes
- 02:26 Color Flat
- 03:31 Shading
- 05:46 Paint-over and post effects
# Transcript
## Intro
Hello, Bonjour,
My name is David Revoy and today, I'm proposing a video overview of my recent digital painting workflow with Krita.
I'll comment the timelapse picture of the illustration you can see right now on your screen. So, let's start.
## Storyboard/thumbnail
Preparing a thumbnail, or a sketch with a large brush always helps me to solve on of the main problem when I start an illustration: What to paint? Where to paint it? How to organise the composition?
Seriously, once this step is done well, and I have the result I want in mind, everything is so much easier.
## Sketch
Once I have the idea and the main composition, I reduce its opacity and start to draw over with a thin line.
I'm not making beautiful lines like I would do for a comic book line-art.
This layer will be hidden later in the process, so I'm not putting pressure to 'draw well'.
The main goal of this step is to solve anatomy, hands, perspective, solidity of objects.
It always saves a lot of time later to get that done early. Mainly because correcting things while painting with little adjustement here and there can be very time consuming.
## Color Flat
When my thin lines are done, I reduce their opacity and hide my thumbnail.
At this point, I'll start to split all the main shapes, layer after layer.
For a landscape, it often mean foreground, middleground, background. But the number of layer is fluid depending the complexity of the scene.
I'm not naming my layer but I prefer to enlarge the size of the thumbnail at this step.
Why? Maybe because you'll see, Krita is not really good at preserving the name of layers for what I'll do later so it is a lost of time.
Once my silhouette shapes are painted, I lock the opacity of the layer, so I can paint only inside the shapes, and then I paint a pass with flat color as if they were under the light of an overcast. It's like the light of a cloudy day. The light comes from all directions and the colors are not too vivid, only deep contact shadows can be visible.
It's a bit easier for me to start texture rocks and trunk of trees this way. It will also help me to keep a color consistency across many panels when I'll paint future episode of my webcomic Pepper&Carrot.
## Shading
Once I painted the scene totally like that, I start to put all the layers inside clipping groups.
You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+G to put a layer quickly in a clipping group.
The layer stack becomes quickly a mess, so I usually need to dezoom the layer stack and I start to rename the layers. I name the groups, I name the layer base, and I fill the layer on top of my base with a middle RGB gray color 127,127,127. I like to drag and drop a color slot of my palette on the canvas to do that.
I also switch the layer to the blending mode "Hard Light".
Hard Light is a blending mode where middle gray will be rendered as a transparent color. Anything under this color will darken, something good to paint shadows, and everything up to this color will brighten, good for our highlights.
At this moment, I also enter a command line to modify a setting of my tablet:
I switch the Ctrl+click color picker that I have on the first button to a Ctrl+Alt+Click action.
This Ctrl+Alt+Click shortcut will pick only the color on the current layer.
This will be useful for painting and picking the colors of our shadows and light.
That's why I filled the color with a solid middle gray: it's because the color picker doesn't works really well when the layer has transparent colors.
Because the shading layer is clipped to my base shape, I can then shade all the scene.
I usually start by finding the good couple of Key-light and shadows.
I later think about the half-tones , indirect lights, specular points and highlights, it's not really a problem because this type of layer is really flexible to change my mind and it's great because I can fully focus my attention on lighting the scene and trying to get the best out of my designs.
## Paint-over
Unfortunately, the method rarely ends up on a Tadaaaaa! everything is done, and I dislike some rigidity in the shapes. That's why nothing replaces a manual paint-over pass to give a more organic look to those parts.
I often merge at this point the clipping groups. It's a bit annoying to do because the merged result is auto-renamed with the word "Merged" at the end, but Krita will have soon an option in 5.2 to prevent this.
## Post
At the end, I'm using the Adjustement Layers to fix the contrast. I also use very often the Color Balance this way, or Lens Blur, when I have to simulate the depth of a shot.
On other classic I'm using, I add a layer with the "Screen" or "Luminosity SAI Tool" or "Color Dodge" Blending mode on the top to simulate light coronas and other bloom effect.
It's also easy to add with a multiply blending mode a vignette effect to the overall, but this illustration won't need this effect.
## Conclusion
All in all, this way to build my illustration learnt me a bit more discipline because of how the steps are organised... But on the bright side, I enjoy the flexibility of splitting my steps. I hope you'll find it useful! Have a good painting time.
---
**License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International **
Video and artworks by David Revoy
www.davidrevoy.com
webcomic: www.peppercarrot.com
Background music by Omfgdude "Lofi-Hip-hop"
CC-0 / Public Domain - 2018
https://opengameart.org/content/lofi-hip-hop
😍 Special thanks to @RinCat@meow.cloud on the Fediverse for saving a corrupted MP4 recording of this video.
Edited with Kdenlive 21.04 appimage on Fedora 37 KDE
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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6 comments
(click for the full 4K resolution)
I wanted to explore if I could bend my style around a bolder composition choice and stylised main shapes. Just to experiment how it could bring a modern more contemporary perfume to my style.
The theme is probably obvious as we reach the end of 2022, it will be also the end of my long period of experimentation and I'll go back to paint the next webcomic episode.
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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no comments
I uploaded a new set of artworks to have greeting cards ready on my Redbubble shop. You can still get them before the 25, worldwide delivery (and I get 20% off the sale 😁 so thank you for your support!):
- [Greeting cards on Redbubble]( https://www.redbubble.com/people/davidrevoy/shop?artistUserName=davidrevoy&asc=u&collections=3227717&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=relevant)
- [All artworks & products](https://www.redbubble.com/people/davidrevoy/explore?asc=u&page=1&sortOrder=recent)
If you want to print them with your own hardware or as a product for your company, you can ☺️. You'll find the source and licenses of the artwork in high resolution here: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/artworks.html (check the "Source Explorer" and the category "Misc", "Wallpaper", "Artworks", "Shop"; all the artworks are categorised here).
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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no comments
Each year −more or less− I try to paint a Pepper&Carrot artwork for the holidays.
So here is one for 2022. I'm still doing my drawing researches and studies, so I took a break this week and finished this piece.
You'll see in this artwork where I am right now in my researches: I stretch a bit more my style for the shapes and volumes to something more cartoony. The exagerated facial expression of Pepper and the design of the dragon here is a perfect example of that. You are probably familiar with this aspect of my work, because design like the "Dragoncow" of Episode 3 or many episode of Pepper&Carrots have this type of designs. I unfortunately abandoned this way to design things over the last years to draw more realistic and with adult proportion my characters. ["Episode 34: The Knighting of Shichimi"](https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/webcomic/ep34_The-Knighting-of-Shichimi.html) is a good example of this other possibility I have. I'm trying to find a good in-between. [Tsukasa Hojo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukasa_Hojo), one of my favorite Manga author, really succeed at drawing his characters sometime as super deformed, sometime very cartoony, and sometime very adult and serious. So, that's probably a key here: to stop worrying about the design consistency of the character accross the panels, and deform them to serve the story and the tone of the panel.
Another aspect of my research is a big desire to totally drop the line-art or line visible (even painted) around the volumes. That's a constant in all my recent training, and I had no idea how to make things to work for the happy/bouncy/humor shapes without any 'comic lines'. When the volumes are more adult, I have no problem about it, but in case of cartoony design, I had many failures of rendering. There is not a lot of examples in this field, except for the CG 3D cartoons (Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks), so I had a look and I figured little tips here and there. Creasing a bit more the shadows totally occlused, lighting the scene as a Cinema set (rim light, athmospheric foc, depth of field blur, glow around over exposed objects). That made me reconnects with my old work of Art Director and Concept Artist when I worked on the Blender Movies.
All in all, that's probably a keyword that became more central in my brainstorming: "cinematic".
I'll continue to share soon, my adventures in this quest. Thank you for your patience about the episodes.
Source: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/viewer/artworks-src__2022-12-07_it-s-decorating-time_by-David-Revoy.html
Redbubble products: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/134493144
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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6 comments
I'm not gonna lie, I started to miss drawing these two. 💜
Click for the full resolution (and for looking at the brush work, I start to get a good economy of brush strokes).
Have a good week-end!
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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8 comments
I continue my drawing training and sometimes I push the rendering of a test and finalize it, like in this one.
I'm using almost no ref' to train my ability to predict color and light by imagination. Among my new skill, I'm now more confident at drawing and designing men. I can also better predict overexposed light areas and strong sunlight.
It feels great to do progress.
**Process:**
**Source and high resolution (4K):** [Uploaded here](https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/artworks/misc.html).
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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1 comment
_4K picture, click to enlarge._
I'm still training my brushwork and my speed to complete artwork. My goal, is to sort of bypass drawing or inking totally and draw later with the thin brush while painting. After many failed tests, this one is starting to bring together a lot of aspects that I like. A good reason to share it with you. I hope you'll like it.
**Process:**
I don't have a lot of snapshots of this one, but this early 'block' painting of the process might give you clue of the technique used. I spent a lot of time finding a good brush to block volumes quickly while still having a little texture and not too much mixing or opacity variation to resist doing too early 'over modeling'.
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-11-24_that-feeling-when-you-get-a-new-skill_the-sketch.jpg)
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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6 comments
An obvious [parody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro) to celebrate 15K followers on Mastodon (it grows quickly because a lot of Twitter users joins it recently). It's a social network I love because it is made of Free/Libre software, a decentralized network, and open standards for the protocol.
My account is here: https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy
I'll always keep posting my art here too, in high resolution. Maybe RSS is my biggest social-media too in a way. It's just amazing how calming it can be for me as an artist to know that my biggest social-media audience is on the a free/libre social media right now. It will for sure weight in my brainstorming; I don't feel the need to please any ranking algorythm. My article of this year "[How proprietary social-medias are shaping the future of Pepper&Carrot](https://www.davidrevoy.com/article904/how-proprietary-social-medias-are-shaping-the-future-of-peppercarrot)" feels already far away and that's a good thing.
This artwork reflects that.
Update: I switch this artwork under 'fan-art/fair-use' because even if I painted it from scratch, the artwork contains many element of derivation that belong to Ghibli studio. I read recently [a blog-post about fair-use and transformative derivation](https://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/) of copyrighted material, and I prefer protect myself about it.
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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7 comments
_4K picture posted, click to enlarge_
Hey, slowly but surely I'm continuing my experimentations. I filled many pages on my brainstorming (a libreoffice draw multipage ODG file) and I'm starting to get a better picture of where I'm going. I still need a little bit of time to train certain missing skills, or skills I'm unsure I can get.
In fact, it's easy to write something like "leave more brush stroke at a early step" in a brainstorming, but harder to have a workflow that leave interesting looking early brush stroke. It's all about that type of exploration.
I'm very near the completion of my research. I even already have a new full storyboard for Pepper&Carrot episode 38 that includes all the changes I want to perform. So, on this last set of test, I try to enjoy the trip, and I used my favorite test temporary metaphor characters to storytell that.
About my painting process, I'm not splitting the color flat and shading anymore, I try to paint the result directly and calculate all the shading on the fly. I learnt while having the previous workflow a valuable lesson about how I wasn't setting enough room in the difference of the value between keylight and shadow.
I also try to draw quicker pencil sketch without rendering the volumes. It's a bit frustrating, but I still trash the pencil layer early in the process to keep only painted shapes so better to not spend too much time on it. It's only an assistant to paint faster the first set of area of painting and get the composition and the main proportion mostly right.
I'll continue tests into this direction. Thanks for reading!
[video]data/images/blog/2022/2022-11-14_enjoying-the-trip_720p.mp4[/video]
_video of the process, thanks the Recorder feature of Krita (9MB, mp4, 1min27)_
### Picture of the process:
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-11-14_enjoying-the-trip_a.jpg)
_I had the idea of this artwork on my sketchbook, I quickly redrew it on a 4K page._
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-11-14_enjoying-the-trip_b.jpg)
_I'm feeding the canvas with large brushes, my goal being to capture a general mood and the direction of the light._
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-11-14_enjoying-the-trip_c.jpg)
_Then I try with a medium brush to 'block' all the sub-volumes._
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-11-14_enjoying-the-trip_d.jpg)
_The last pass (more than 50% of the full time) is spent on justifying details, and edge control._
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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1 comment
Here are two new animation from the Morevna studio. The movie was published last week and I immediately reshared it on all my social medias. But now I can take the time to write a blog-post about it, so it joins my collection of [derivations](https://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?tag/derivation).
So, at first, movie time!
## Episode 3
- Ytb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuw1B334feI
- Ptb: https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/7DLVmVmBy8w7QxJP5e7gkF
**Other languages:**
- French version: https://peertube.touhoppai.moe/w/6P15SNygm1xNCpXM322JUe
- Russian version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynNxFjTMDUY
- Karaoke version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHvORrJKLZs
## Episode 4
- English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wWIZ7wT8eg
- French version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfx0aWoRx1I
- Russian version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnj7nLzhkj
## About the studio
The studio works in full autonomy and I thanks them a lot for that: I wouldn't find the time even if I wish to help an animated project.
I also want to send here another big "thank you" for the director(s), animators, and actors and all the staff who worked on this project. Also, a big thanks to those who [support the Morevna studio](https://morevnaproject.org/donate/?type=all) because here also, the studio is fully independent.
They really preserved the humor and tone of the comic and I obviously like how they use only Free/Libre and Open-Source software to make the movie and they release also the result under an open license. I couldn't dream better about seeing one day this episode published in that shape when I started writing these episodes (something like ~8 years ago?...oh wow, time flies).
Oh, and big 💜 on Saffron's voice and acting.
## Making of and Studio tour:
But another cool aspect of the Morevna project are the making of they share: the team makes very nice video documentaries about their process. Here is under a 3min50s that I really like, showing the interactions at their studio.
- Ptb: https://peertube.touhoppai.moe/w/7TiD6UHm9qvFrZswz6fqxJ
I'm amazed when I see all the work they have do to clean-up and split all my comic pages. Especially knowing I keep changing of workflow (art on my Krita files sometime are single layer because I sometime work 'flat') and it must be a lot of work to convert all the panels to 16:9 ratio, reconstruct backgrounds or sometime redraw the panels and characters totally. Bravo for that to all the team working on it!
You'll also find on the Morevna blog and video channels more in depth videos about their free/libre and open-source software workflow, including even links to full courses (check 'Education' category on top of their blog).
You'll find on their website the episode 6 "The Potion Contest" already done the same way and Episode 5 "Holiday Special" too.
Bravo Morevna project! 👍
**Links:**
- Morevna blog: https://morevnaproject.org/blog/
- Morevna on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@morevnaproject
- Donate Morevna: https://morevnaproject.org/donate/?type=all
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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22 comments
Hi everyone, right now it's a special time: I need to experiment and it's more like a wind that is blowing quite strongly in me. You have probably already noticed it by the latest content I shared on blog or on social medias. So I'm telling you: I'm very likely to scatter myself, multiply various attempts, and test even more things soon.
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-10-31_pushing-time_by-david-revoy.jpg)
So I have no idea when the next episode 38 of Pepper&Carrot will be released, or rather let's say "in what form". I have already written several screenplays and storyboards but now too much time passes between writing the screenplay and putting them online in the form of comics and I have a very bad time with this long delay. It feels like posting feelings and emotions that I had a few months back. As a result, I often get tired of my story before I even publish them and need to rewrite them because I no longer find in it a means of expression.
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-10-31_huge-machine-to-maintain_by-david-revoy.jpg)
I currently need two months for only seven pages of comics. Why is it so long?... It's because I have to take into account all the specificities of the project: my rather slow painting style first, then the cycle of collaborative corrections, and then finally all the technical requirements for the translation system. All that takes a lot of time, it's even so intensive that I often need several weeks to recover from it because it always ends in sleepless nights. Also, it bothers me to disappear from the networks during these long months of production, it only adds distance and oblivion for the characters and the story. And all this to only publish two or three stories a year, which frustrates and depresses me. All this machinery doesn't bring me closer to my story, my art and readers: it distances me from them.
[](data/images/blog/2022/2022-10-31_thinking_by-david-revoy.jpg)
So that's why it boils inside me all the time. I would like to reform my way of publishing my stories because this mode of production clearly puts me in an impasse. I have the intuition that there is a new angle but also that I will have to experiment. However, one thing is certain in this whole story: I intend to share this exploration with you.
