Winter Pottery, Explosion of Tastes
Digital Painting, Krita
2023
In early 2023 I was, in a manner of speaking, homeless.
Not exactly the sexy death rattle kind of homeless, lame airbnb homeless. But also studioless. Everything was packed away in storage somewhere. I only had my backpack, luggage and the asus zenbook duo.
Now, there comes a time in every digital artists life when one must examine their relationship with Adobe. The great imperial power of art making software. Was I really going to subject my new megacool dual screen art making laptop to this cruelty? Maybe should see what else is out there?
And so I embarked on what I pompously coined 'the Grand Tour (of art making softwares)', a quest.
There was a bunch of them: Rebelle, Paintstorm, HEAVYPAINT, Realistic Paint Studio, Clip Studio Paint.. maybe more? Homeless in real estate and homeless in software. Go around and try out what do you like, where to root next.
For new years I had arrived in Cyprus and come to Krita.
Ah Krita! The charmingly janky open source darling with the butter smooth brush engine.
At the heart of any painting software is its brush engine. Does it stamp an image of a brush tip a thousand times to make a stroke? Lay out a vector line or polygon to map a brush stroke onto? Does it run liquid simulation to imitate watercolor and pigment movement? Does it blend color through rich colorspace or run through some washed out middle grey?
Can you make custom brushes and how nerdy can you get? Maximum brush size? Performance? What other tools surround the brush engine?
The artist in the 16th century had to grind their own pigments, mix colordust into oil, source the linen, craft their own brushes out of stick and hair. It’s not necessarily that different today. We hunt for add-ons, tinker with custom brushes and keyboard shortcuts. Build your own node groups and customize your game engine.
The pictures? Ah yes. For ‘Winter Pottery’ I was enamoured with John Park’s landscapes, trying to channel some of that control and simplicity. ‘Explosion of tastes’ began as a study of Kritas pencil brushes. But really, this is pure formalism, testing Krita’s brush engine for painting and drawing. The subject matter is but mere fantasy, yet it’s the Cyprus roadside terracota that’s in the painting.
The tour was illuminating! Today I still pay tithes to Adobe, warden of my brush, but somewhere in the back of my mind there’s now a concept for what painting app I might design. UX for maximum flow, a colorpicker that includes the complementary, a sketchbook inspired file system..
