Make the most of the Assistants
Learn how to paint in perspective and create perfect strokes – the Ruler Assistant Editor tools make it easy, says Katarzyna Oleska
Learn to paint in perspective and create perfect strokes, with Ruler Assistant Editor tools, and Katarzyna Oleska.
Krita’s Grid, Perspective and Assistant tools can come in handy when developing a new composition, establishing perspective or simply painting shapes. When used in moderation they can help you create unusual perspective views and compositions in your paintings, that might have been harder and more time- consuming to produce had you been working from imagination alone.
The Grid and Perspective tools can be edited and can also be useful as guidelines, but they won’t slow down the painting process. The Ruler Assistant Editor Tools can be used in collaboration with the Brush tool and can help guide your brushstrokes. Here I’ll show you how they work and how to use them.
1 Applying the Grid
The Grid tool can be turned on and off from the top menu (select View> Show Grid). The spacing, number of subdivisions and colours of the lines can be changed (choose Settings> Configure Krita> Grid). The grid can also be altered in real time with the Edit the Grid tool, by pressing Ctrl and the mouse button. Dragging the mouse either left to right or up and down then enables you to alter the spacing of the grid. 2 The Ruler Assistant Editor tool This tool enables you to create shapes and interesting perspective views that you can then use as guides for your brushstrokes later on. Each element can be chosen from the Tool Options docker. Each can also be separately edited, turned on and off and deleted. Once you create your Assistant configuration you can save it and then open again in another file, for a more streamlined creative process.
3 The Brush Assistant
Checking the Assistant box in a Tool Options docker while using a brush will make it react to the active elements that have been previously created by the Ruler Assistant Editor. The strength with which the brush reacts can be adjusted with a simple slider. Note that the visibility of Painting Assistants and Assistant Previews (these are the lines following the brush) can be controlled from the top menu.