Tutorial Grayscale to Color - Krita Digital Painting - Character design

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I just posted a new video tutorial! A commented step-by-step guide and advice on how to paint an original fantasy character design from scratch in Krita.

Timeline:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 00:48 Setup
  • 02:05 Silhouette
  • 06:32 Lambert Lightning
  • 08:00 Grayscale painting
  • 10:30 Color
  • 15:10 Painting

I explain my interface layout here: https://youtu.be/uYdEkOyFUn8

Brushes are here: https://youtu.be/s7rV88734pE

Soundtrack:


30 comments

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

Wow, that’s awesome! I didn’t know #Krita could do this!

Does this also work with scanned pencil drawings?
#freesoftware #art

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@ArneBab Hey, thank you! Yes, it can work in theory. I saw the other day a new generation of pencil: the 'mate' or 'black' (Staedler and Faber Castel) that behaves a bit like colored black pencils, and in general less shiny and metallic than usual pencils. If I see them on my artshop at next visit, I'll try them, because I'm curious also about trying to tone greyscale on my sketchbook as a softer alternative to what I do with ballpen right now but usual pencil shines a bit too much for me.

4 ★

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

I have 6 of those Faber Castell matte here,, but I didn’t yet test the difference side-by-side.

I can test them and scan the result if it helps you ☺

Or do you need a photo (I could take a rough photo with the webcam)?

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@ArneBab Oh nice you have them, so yes maybe you can enlight me about something: do they smudge easily? It's for a problem of sketchbook; my 2B pencil drawing often transfert easily on the other side of the paper when I close the sketchbook. I know I can spray fixative, but I often don't have the spray while traveling. I'm looking for dark pencils that don't transfert (and no problem if they can't erase well).

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

Firstoff: the erasing works ☺ (I love these squidgeable rubbers: faber-castell.de/produkte/ArtE — I can simply prod the drawing repeatedly to take away part of the line)

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

For smudging: I just tried rubbing the sheets together and didn’t see any smudging, but I think I didn’t put on enough to actually see that. I’ll try making it darker …

here’s a first test without smudging and without any postprocessing.

🖼️ original 

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

Here’s an adjusted version with a line erased into the eyes and aggressive smudging with the finger over the mouth (left is the normal pencil, right is the matte, I do not see a significant difference …) and three hash-tests: 12B, 6B, 2B, all three smudged for about 2 seconds with the finger (I only see smudging for the 12B, the others seem clean).

I rubbed the two sheets again, but still don’t see anything transfer to the other side.

🖼️ original 

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

The left eye is with a normal HB pencil, the right eye with a 2B matte (but not sharpened …), the left part of the mouth with a 2B mechanical pencil (0.5), the right part of the mouth with a 2B matte pencil (but sharpened), the whole nose is with 6B, the chin and below is with 12B matte.

Is there another specific test you’d need?

🖼️ original 

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@ArneBab Oh thanks! 😍 That's perfect, thank you for the time you took doing that. Super interesting to see the smudge tests and the erasing. I think I'll get them on a online artshop this evening so I can play with them later next week. 😊

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

I just bought the ones I used from the creators: faber-castell.de/produkte/Pitt

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@ArneBab ... and I just bought them :) I should receive them at the end of next week, I'll try to post sketches done with them before the end of the month.

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

I hope they work well for you!

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@ArneBab I received them yesterday afternoon (that was quick!). I love them, it's really like the "pierre noire" I'm using in signing session and a bit like colored black pencil but a little bit less waxy. Very smooth on bristol paper and cool variation of grayscale in the line. Defintely adopted! Thank you again for the tests and recommendation. 👍

Photo of a sketch of Mastodon's mascot and Pleroma-tan with brooms, cleaning the place. Pencil: FaberCastell Mate, 2B. Bristol paper. 10 ★

link Arne Babenhauserheide   - Reply
ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

very cool! I’m glad my little test helped you!

link jfml - Jonas Laugs   - Reply
jfml@mastodon.art

Very cool video, as always! Did you use OBS to records this or can the Krita recorder include the interface?

link jfml - Jonas Laugs   - Reply
jfml@mastodon.art

Ooops, you say in the end that is really OBS, awesome!

link Thomas Frans 🇺🇦   - Reply
thomy2000@fosstodon.org

I don't know why I watch your videos as I'm not an artist. I guess I just started to like the "journey" of art more than I do the destination during the last year. Amazing video and great art as always.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@thomy2000 Thank you 😊

link Deathbunnygirl   - Reply
deathbunnygirl@mastodon.social

Such an amazing tutorial! I set the key shortcuts up in my Xencelab Quickkeys (Works on Fedora perfectly) and it works like a dream! it's like sculpting but for 2D

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@deathbunnygirl Thanks! Oh, I'm curious about something about Xencelabs; do you need a proprietary driver on Fedora for the tablet or the remote Quickkey? I had an email last year from them for a review/video but as usual I say I'll test hardware with FLOSS only, and they had no idea if it could work (and I couldn't know more, because those who send email are marketing departement, they rarely know anything tech about their products... )

link andre   - Reply
andre@fedi.jaenis.ch

Hey,

thanks for the recordings.

I was wondering whether you have a transcript or subtitles somewhere.
My daughter is hard of hearing and discovered Krita the other day.

Her Debian doesn't have an offline manual (as far as I can tell). The online one is English. So having that plus a series of video tutorials might be a good start.

Meanwhile I am going to research how the translation process for Krita looks like.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@andre Hey thanks! The only subtitles are the autogenerated one by the Youtube AI. I had a quick check, they are ok. Unfortunately, impossible to download them as *.srt file to tweak them and propose them for translation.
In the past, I tried the Kdenlive module that could also convert voice to subtitle. It worked ok, but required a lot of postprocessing ( eg. 2h of typing and fixing). Unfortunately, it was too long and tedious to do, so I decided at my scale to stop making them. :/

link andre   - Reply
andre@fedi.jaenis.ch

As much as I dislike the company behind it but Whisper by OpenAI is packaged for Linux systems and yields good results.

You already have a pipeline for translating comics. Perhaps it can be extended for timestamping and translating videos?

link andre   - Reply
andre@fedi.jaenis.ch

Ah, looks like that's what Kdenlive is using under the hood:

https://github.com/KDE/kdenlive/blob/master/data/scripts/whispertosrt.py

The community had scripted around the limitation for years it seems:
https://github.com/openai/whisper/discussions/98#discussioncomment-3727299

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@andre I'll have a look! Thanks for the links. 👍

link Th3s3us   - Reply
Th3s3us@mastodon.art


Great tutorial and magnificent technique

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@Th3s3us 💜 Thank you!

link Th3s3us   - Reply
Th3s3us@mastodon.art


--- Name Challenger ---
(It's hard but I'm trying)

Young warrior (pride and strength), shield (tank), dressed in the colors of the sun.

Lionelle => courage and strength (image of the lion);
Eileen = > slender of the sun;
Claire => shiny, luminous, shining.

link David Revoy Author, - Reply
davidrevoy

@Th3s3us Lionnelle is a very good one. :blobaww: 🦁
Thanks for the list! I'll try to make a follow-up video in a couple of weeks with the result I'll pick.

link Tora   - Reply
tora2023@pixelfed.uno

one word: wow


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