Wojtryb’s “Won’t teach you to draw” krita brush-pack

Reference manual
Version​ 6.0

Picking the right bundle

If your tablet do ​not have the ​tilt recognition (for instance: Intuos Pro, Cintiq, newer Huion
tablets), pick the​ *-normal-anyHand.bundle​ file.
If it does supports it, pick one of the tilt bundles:
● *​tilt-rightHand.bundle​ if you’re right handed.
● *​tilt-leftHand.bundle​ otherwise.
In case you don’t have tilt features in your tablet, it doesn't matter which hand you use for
drawing, so there is only one bundle.

Version with tilt recognition is the original one I’m using, but is not essential - it just gives you a
bit more precision, so if you happen to have it, pick tilt bundle first. If you don’t like it, you can
always try the normal version. Using a tilt version with a tablet that can’t recognize it will lead to
all brushes having the weird angle.

Installation guide

1. Go to ​settings -> Manage Resources​ on the top of krita.

2. You can remove the previous bundle by moving it from left to right if you have it installed,
but there should be no conflicts between those.
3. Select ​Import Bundles ​(First button)
4. Pick the right version of the bundle as stated at the beginning. ​Normal ​for tablets without
tilt recognition, ​Rotation (right or left hand) ​if it does.

This brush pack requires ​krita​ in version 4

​ .4.0​ or newer.

This brush pack is licenced under GPL v3 - feel free to use it any way you like, both
for personal and commercial use. It’s also very ok to modify the presets, and use
them in your packs. If you’ll like them enough to use them, please ping me on social
media of your liking (@wojtryb) - it motivates me to work on future updates. If you
want to show some gratitude financially, consider ​donating to the krita foundation​,
helping to make our program better.
 Simple brushes
Most basic part of the set. Good place to start if it’s
your first time with digital painting. ​First one is useful
for conceptualizing and getting sharp edges. Can
create gradient-like transitions between shapes.

Second brush features basic color shift feature - hue

changes a bit on each stroke to make a difference
between the strokes. Pressing harder allows to
change it further, and make the brush a bit darker.
Suitable on any stage of the painting process.

Square impasto brushes

Brushes that can cover the whole area on which you
draw, making them suitable for each part of the
process. All of them use the impasto ​effect introduced
in krita 4.3. It means that value variations are
embedded in a brushtip.

These brushes use quite complex pressure dynamics:

pressing harder makes it more opaque, as in any
usual brush. After you reach the maximum opacity,
you can still increase a pressure, to change the
current color to a darker one. This way you can get
darker and darker values when you pick (ctrl) colors you draw. Pressure also controls the
contrast of the impasto effect, so you can draw lightly over the area to bring its contrast a bit
down. Because of that, it’s easier to make things darker with them, then the opposite way.

First one is the most basic brush with the impasto being very subtle - it’s the most versatile
brush in a set, and my favourite one for painting anything. ​Second brush ​is a variation of it with
a pattern applied - you get this basic texture1 subtraction here, but only at the beginning of each
stroke when you press lightly. You can force it to have less of this texture by pressing hard at
the beginning.

1
Since krita 4.4 you can bring the pattern scale slider to the topbar. Just click this little arrow next to a
default slider (size or opacity), or add a new one in settings > configure toolbars.
Now, if those color variations were not enough for you, here is an ​experimental brush with a
much stronger impasto effect. Remember, that you can press lighter and harder to change the
contrast of this effect to give you a little bit more control over it. I guess it looks better with short
strokes and single point presses, but you are to decide.

The last one ​is quite versatile. It has a much more controllable impasto effect and is perfect for
doing those thumbnail sketches, as you can use it to get some light and shadow areas with no
effort. It’s easy to get those happy accidents, as you unintentionally create some basic form
while working on a shape. This brush also works for some usual painting and rendering in a full
color.

“Watercolor”
A square brush is based on the new watercolor
brushes introduced in krita 4.3, but is not an attempt
to mimic the feeling of the real watercolors.

It lets you erase parts of the current stroke if you

draw over them again with low pressure. It’s a really
nice way of adding some painterly shading. Usually
you need multiple strokes to get to the needed color
of shadow, but the effect often seems to be worth it.

If you want to get high opacity, it’s quite important to

start each stroke with a big pressure, as otherwise
you won’t be able to build it up later.

Complex impasto brushes

Impasto brushes that are meant to be used rather for
rendering details, adding pattern, sophisticated and
stylized brushwork, but not in the beginning stages of
drawing.

The ​first one is a high-contrast impasto brush, with the

tip coming from Ramon Miranda’s ​Digital Atelier2. The
beginning of each stroke always has no contrast, but
after that, you can control it with pressure. Handy for
some oil brush effects.

2
Thanks again to Ramon and Boudewijn for letting me use those resources a long time ago.
Now something with no tilt rotation. The angle of ​this brush follows the direction you paint, with
the darker area on the end of each stroke to differentiate them. Quite experimental to be honest,
but I hope you’ll find some cool use cases.

Continuing on our impasto painterly brushes, here’s a ​dotted brush tip, but each dot has a
slightly different value. It’s ​second variation has a random dab rotation, so instead of various
lines you get a lot of different dots. Applying different pressures gives you control over impasto
contrast.

The ​last of them is an experiment I couldn’t believe worked. It’s an animated brush, so it
consists of different brush tips - you can see that those lines are randomly picked from the set.
But each of them have the impasto effect, so one of the ends is darker than the other. Once
again, you control it with pen pressure. I’m definitely going to create more of these for different
elements, like grass for example - you know, many grass shapes, each part of each shape with
a slightly different color. Big area to innovate.

Cylindrical brushes
Here comes this ​soft brush3 that is my alternative to
the airbrush. It just gives you a lot more control as you
have a hard and soft edge here, so you can actually
paint with it.

Just as the watercolor brush, it’s very good to add

some occlusion shadows, and works especially well
for cylindrical forms - I would definitely suggest trying
it out for some anatomy sketches, organic plants and
this sort of stuff. The hard side is a little bit darker than
the soft one if you press hard enough.

If you have tilt support in your tablet, you can easily

place the sharp edge on the top and left, and change the brush angle to 180’ to get bottom and
right ones. With no tilt support, you can still use this brush rotating your canvas with shift+MMB,
or by changing the angle of the brush.

With this brush, I often needed to draw twice in places where two forms connect. and get the
occlusion shadow on both of them. So here is ​another brush ​that allows you to do it in a single
stroke. Just try it in anatomy on bent elbows and knees.

3
The brush tip comes from ​Rakurri brush pack​. Many thanks for letting me use it here.
 Messy brushes
Group of brushes that change its colour in every
stamp instead of every stroke -those may feel a bit
hard to control at first, but they can be used to
create a very good base for your drawing.

Painting on the top of a freshly blocked canvas,

you can use low opacity to create a non-rendered
look. These not rendered parts of your painting
look quite well in the background or in a painting
you abandoned in the beginning phase.

I like to use them to cover texture brushes with

them, when some areas begin to draw too much
attention.

This type of brush is inspired by Aaron Griffin ones that you can see in his​ ​time lapse video​.

Smudge brushes
The first ​smudge brush is my open-source
implementation of Corel Painter’s dry brush used
by Sinix in his ​painting like a sculptor tutorial​. I’m
aware, that at first, its dynamic seems very
counterintuitive, but I recommend giving it some
time and effort. You can use Sinix tutorials to help
yourself with learning them.

After a short time, the brush loses its ability to paint

and starts blurring what’s underneath them.
Use short strokes to block, and long ones to merge
different planes.

It can be used for blurring and smearing, but there

is a more ​specific brush for that. You can’t really
use it for the actual painting, but it should work well in creating patterned transitions without
getting so blurred at the end.

The ​third one from the group is the one I like the most, as it’s actually meant for painting. If
you’re blocking the area, you just need to press quite hard. It wouldn’t be that easy to achieve
precise strokes with it, but you should be able to get some expressive color sketches.
Remember about the ability to adjust the pattern scale.
 Pattern brushes
Brushes with a pattern - they shouldn’t be used for
blocking. Don’t use them, when adding new
elements to your painting - rather to blend shapes
with similar colors and finish places with color and
shapes already blocked.

This ​grainy brush leaves a certain amount of noise

depending on pressure, so you can get some
dithering effect when merging color groups

Second one has a very strong pattern, and paints in a

chosen color, and the one complementary to it. You
can use it just like that, or change the blending mode
to ‘​overlay’ or ‘​color’ to mess your colors a little bit. ​The third brush from this pattern group is
similar to the noise brush, though the pattern is quite different.

There’s also this ​variant of usual brush with canvas texture, that gives this look of children
illustration. It has its one side less opaque than the other- use it first for a smoother transition.

Move brush
Ramon Miranda brush that I loved4. You can use it
in any phase of your drawing to drag and drop
whole elements of the picture.

You can ​download the rest of the set, and watch

the ​tutorial video​. It can be used to fix the
composition by moving big chunks of a painting
without losing details.

You can also use it to smoothen the edges (the

brush is very sharp) and just as a visual effect -
see hair in a portrait above.

4
I guess its Ramon’s open-source implementation of Jama Jurabaev brush, that you could know
 Default krita brushes
There are some presets from the default krita set that
got into the set. I’ve decided to include them, as I use
it quite a lot, and want to recommend it to be used
with the rest of the brushes.

The ​shape brush is very useful not only for blocking

the shapes but also for creating some sharp edges,
particle effects, lettering, drawing stylized ropes and
lines.

And there’s also this ​blur brush which is quite

dangerous to use when you don’t know which things
to blur, but sometimes it’s a bit easier to use it,
instead of the gaussian blur filter.

Additional tips

● This set is meant to be used mainly for digital painting, without lineart. Starting with color
instead of grayscale also gives some advantages. You can still use them as you want,
but you may lose some of the features.
● Use shift to change the brush size between strokes and control to get the color from
canvas. Color shift features of the core brushes allows lots of blending and getting new
colors by color picking.
● All of the core brushes are meant to be used both for drawing and erasing. It may be a
good idea to switch default (E) shortcut of erase mode to something even closer to
control and shift.
● Most of my brushes can be used both for getting the right shape and changing color
inside the shape to get the form right. Use alpha blocking feature (global or layer-only) to
determine if you are currently dealing with form or shape. Switch it off, while adding
something to the shape and switch erase mode on, while subtracting from the shape.
While drawing in the shape, keep your alpha blocked.
● If you want to pick those brushes with Right Mouse Button (which I recommend) make
sure to increase the amount of displayed brushes to ​26 at least. To do this, go to
Settings -> Configure Krita -> General -> Miscellaneous -> Number of Palette Presets.
● You may find it more comfortable to use color selector as a pop-up instead of docker
(Shift+i). You don’t need to move your hand so much every time you change the color.
The default shortcut is quite hard to get on the keyboard, so I recommend to search for
“show color selector” in Settings -> configure krita -> Keyboard shortcuts and change it
to something close to your non-dominant hand.
 Appendix - example usage of some brushes

The examples in the manual were included to try to present how I use the set. You can try to
learn from them, but keep in mind that they are by no means any valid form of a tutorial to
painting.

Getting easy cylinder shapes in a single stroke - especially useful as you can easily block them
at a very early stage.

Useful in anatomy too, considering most shapes in the human body are cylindrical. This brush
can be used even for sketching, to make a form look 3D very early on. Then, it can be finished
off by filling the gaps underneath. This brush was also used in the background, and for the
contact shadows. Dual brush can be used on dark form intersections like
bent knees.
 Presentation of getting sharp, blurred, and soft edges.

Dry brushes can be used both to block and merge the planes of any object.
You can use short strokes to paint the planes separately with one colour each, depending on
the position of the light source. As many of them merge smoothly, with colors changing between
the (dashed lines) you can use longer strokes to make those transitions only when they are
needed - note that many planes still need to have sharp transitions (solid lines).
Using the brush in color blending mode to achieve some randomized colorful splats. Works well
on colourful images.