Digital Painting with KRITA 2.9

Expert guide With interest mounting in the free painting tool, there’s now a book to show you how to use it

Author Scott Petrovic Publisher Louvus Media Price £30 (ebook £8) Web www.louvus.com Available Now

krita’s a free, open-source painting tool designed for illustrators and concept artists. 2015 was a big year for the software, with a crowdfunding campaign helping to fund key improvements including performance boosts and animation support.

Since then, the software’s growth has spiked, and so the timing of this book couldn’t be better. It’s essentially a 226-page instruction manual for the latest version of Krita, 2.9. But unlike most software manuals, both the layout and writing style are anything but boring. This colourful guide is packed with illustrations from the author and contributing artists, making it a delight to peruse and learn from.

With plenty of examples and interface screenshots helping to explain both basic and advanced features, it’s also surprisingly easy to follow. And perhaps that’s not surprising at all, as author Scott Petrovic has been involved in the Krita community for a long time as part of the development team, which further endorses the accuracy and reliability of the information offered by the book.

Best of all, some of the profits from the book will go back to the Krita Foundation, so it can continue to fix bugs and add more features.

Work from other Krita artists is on show throughout the book. Here’s Gkoumas George’s character art.