A list of links to free tutorials for learning Krita, a digital drawing and painting application.
Some of these tutorials are old and may not work exactly with the most recent version of Krita. As of 2024, the current version is 5.2.2. Krita 5.0 was released in 2021, in December.
Creators and Sources
Websites to Learn Krita
My Krita Tutorials & Articles: the ones found in this website.
Official Tutorials: tutorials from Krita's official website.
Krita Tutorials.com: a website with a few Krita tutorials, although most posts appear to simply embed a Youtube video.
Youtube Channels
Many tutorials for Krita can be found as videos on Youtube. Here are some playlists:
Krita - "Krita Tips videos," 22 videos, from 2019, tips from the official Krita channel on Youtube..
David Revoy - "Tutorials," 32 videos, from 2013 to 2024, tutorials by one of Krita's sponsored artists.
Mufasu CAD - "Krita Tutorial," 97 videos, from 2022, assorted 1 minute videos explaining many basic actions you can take in Krita, e.g. how to undo, how to flip an image, how to rotate an image, etc.
GDQuest - "Learn Krita from Zero (Free Tutorials)," 57 videos, from 2016 to 2019, a series of tutorials including how to install and configure Krita, with focus on graphics creating for video-game development.
GDQuest - "Pixel art tutorial," 7 videos, from 2016, practical pixel art tutorials for game development.
TutsByKai - "Krita Tutorials (Digital Art)," 47 videos, from 2029 to 2024, not the finest art in the world, but he can draw with his mouse, so if you don't have a drawing tablet, it could be a good reference.
Age of Asparagus - "Learn Krita with Bob Ross (Updated for Krita 4)," 19 videos, from 2016. A series of a dozen of videos to create a single painting in Krita, inspired by Bob Ross. Teaches how to paint happy little clouds, mountains, trees, water, and so on. Not made by Bob Ross himself but by an anthropomorphized asparagus.
Drawfishan - "Krita Tutorials," 18 videos, from 2020, a series of basic tutorials by an artist.
Pinnguaq - "Krita For Comics," 10 videos, from 2020, a series teaching how to use Krita to draw comics: setting up pages, paneling, sketching, inking, and coloring.
choknater - "Krita Animation Tutorials," 8 videos, from 2018 to 2024, a series teaching how to use Krita to create animated drawings, made by a webtoon artist.
RedRab13 - "Krita Texture Tutorials," 15 videos, from 2016, a curated collection videos creating tile-able textures from various creators.
Tasks
Tips and tutorials for general tasks.
Drawing
Perspective Transform
Seamless Tiling
Symmetry
Grid
Inking
Coloring
Colorize Mask
Clipping Mask
Transparency Mask
Shading
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSQ0hRAtL8Q
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRyAiLIGww
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8tDvGOsFY
Stabilizer
Draw with Mouse
Clone and Transformation Masks
Pixel Art
Animation
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cyD2XeYRw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDPvSo24vAQ
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TSeBUHvhiw
Onion Skinning
Saving Images
For Social Media
A tip on how to add metadata such as copyright to your exported files. Note that some social media websites may strip some or all metadata from uploaded images, since some of this metadata can include GPS locations, which leads to privacy issues. Try downloading an image you upload to social media to check if it's effective..
Warning: Krita is a Digital Painting Application
I want to warn you that Krita is primarily an application for digital painting, and although you can do a lot of graphics-related things with Krita and find tutorials for them, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to use Krita specifically for such tasks. Notably:
- Krita has terrible support for text editing. If you're making comics, for example, I recommend Inkscape for normal text and GIMP for text with effects.
- Krita has "vector" layers which are actually SVG layers. This means you can copy text and other shapes from Inkscape and paste it directly into Krita and it will probably work. This type of layer is completely different from Clip Studio Paint vector layers, which are used for inking (and are called line art layers in Paint Tool SAI). Krita has very powerful brushes and it's great for painting, e.g. with watercolors, so it's comparable to Corel Painter or Rebelle. Some artists, specially manga artists, may benefit more from a simpler brush engine that can draw small lines consistently, which is something you can find in FireAlpaca (freeware), AZDrawing and AZPainter (a free Japanese SAI alternative for Linux), although simpler software would have their own set of shortcomings, such as poor support for high resolutions needed for printing.
- Krita can do animation better than most free drawing software, including FireAlpaca and GIMP. However, for long-running animation, consider another free alternative, OpenToonz, which was used by anime studio Ghibli. Notably, if you made a character red-haired in Krita and you wanted to change their hair to blue, you would need to manually update all the frames, while in OpenToonz you just need to change the color in a color palette.
- Krita has pixel art brushes, and you may find some pixel art tutorials for it, but it's not designed for pixel art. Of course, you can quickly create something that looks like pixel art on anything by reducing the number of colors with a filter and adding a dithering effect. Consider the alternatives GraphicsGale (freeware), MtPaint and Libresprite (libreware), or Aseprite (free if you're a programmer), if you want to do pixel art pixel by pixel.
- Although you can do photo manipulation in Krita, GIMP has more filters and supports more formats. GIMP is very clunky for drawing, but it's very easy to select a pixel-precise rectangle with it.
- If you're only sketching, consider MyPaint as it has an infinite canvas.
In summary, if you're struggling to do something with Krita, it's likely that there is a better suited application for the task.
Tutorials in Portuguese
See the Portuguese version of this page for Krita tutorials in Portuguese.
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