Creative-Commons on Raghukamath – Digital Painter and Freelance Illustrator from India

Morning Ride

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 13:10:48 +0000

Today was a beautiful sunny day. I saw this on my way to get groceries. It was such a relaxing ride.

The license is CC-BY-SA , feel free to use it as a wallpaper or anything. Here is the high resolution file

Fishermen on the beach

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 12:41:18 +0000

I went to nearby beach last week, it was really a pristine and calm place. The beach is Padubidri Blue Flag beach. It is in the Pudubidri town in coastal Karnataka India. The beach was less crowded and the fishermen were enjoying their work. Some a group of small fishermen were getting ready to depart for fishing and were having some fun moment during inspecting their boat.

I tried to capture this moment along with the scene.

Digital painting of fishermen on padubidri beach India

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I am trying more to put down minimal strokes but make sure it is in right place with right colour so that when you zoom in you can see the raw strokes.

Here is the process video that I recorded while painting this in Krita with the recorder feature of Krita.

The cat, the hen and a boy - Sunday Sketch Trip

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 16:30:53 +0000

A Sunday well spent on an wonderful sketch trip with @coolkarnisam and friends. The village Ambeshiv is located on the banks of the Ulhas river near Badlapur. The village was laid back and devoid of all the urgency of the city. Good way to slow down and focus on some skills.

These were done with brush with black gouache paint and Kuretake Sumi ink .

boy

cat

hen

house-door-01

house-door-02

A Swan in a lake

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 15:34:50 +0000

A quick daily personal piece. This was meant to be a practice sketch for a different personal illustration which has a swan in it, but this took its own direction. I am trying to explore lines and new textures for this series.

By print from here.

A swan in a lake

Weekly Graphic - Offerings

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 12:37:15 +0000

आज रविवार का दिन है, तो धरती पर जीवन चक्र के स्त्रोत सूर्य को नमन । - translation - Since it is the day of the sun we bow to the sun which is the source of all life on earth. I am enjoying this simple graphic series, I need to simplify a bit more. Right now I am doing this in Krita but I am also looking to include inkscape in the process. Print is available from my society6 shop

graphic illustration showing offering to sun

How to use Smart Objects in Krita?

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 16:54:18 +0000

Greetings Everyone 🙏🏼

This is the first quick tip tutorial post of this year. Today we are going learn about File Layers in Krita, for those who are coming from Photoshop “Smart Objects” may be a familiar term.

Let us learn about file layers in krita

In my recent advertising illustration project, I had to paint lots of small elements on a page. The page size was huge and the final layout was not fixed yet. The illustration was also going to be adapted to web and print media, that meant that the elements would be resized and moved around a lot across many files. Painting in groups and layers adding transform masks and transparency masks helps but once I changed an element in the main layout I would need to copy this group and layer to all others. Not a good thing when you are on the clock. And advertising tends to involve lots and lots of iterations.

So here comes the “File Layers” feature in Krita to my rescue. It basically helps us to add a file as a linked reference into a document, and when the external file changes it also updates the instances of this file inside all of our .kra file when we open them. We can also convert any group or layer into a file layer on the fly while working. This makes it really easy for us to break down the illustration elements of a project into multiple separate containers linked to a main file. We can then open these containers or file layers in Krita and work on them separately. This also becomes a boon if your file dimension is really huge. The file dimension of this project was 12k x 5k pixels. So this made total sense.

How to draw a sunset painting - Easy step by step Krita tutorial

Sat, 25 Dec 2021 06:11:39 +0000

Krita sunset tutorial - completed image

Greetings everyone. This is the second post in the step-by-step tutorial series and today you and I are going to draw a sea-side sunset painting in Krita. If you need a quick tour of the interface of Krita then you can watch my earlier videos about it.

Step 1

We start with a new document in Krita. Open Krita and click on the New File button, the shortcut is Ctrl + N. In the new file dialog let us keep the canvas in landscape mode. From the predefined preset drop-down choose “Film 16:9 4k” document preset. The dimensions will be 3840px X 2160 px. Click on the Create button.

New file dialog in Krita

First let us save the document, press Ctrl + S and add a nice name for the document and save it somewhere on your computer.

Step 2

I have prepared a colour palette for us, you can use this as a guide but feel free to choose your colours as you like. This is just for guiding us we may also tweak the colours as we paint. To use my palette we can use the reference image tool of Krita. Simply copy the palette image below and go to the Edit menu and click on Paste as Reference image [Ctrl + Shift +R] .

A trek to Kondana caves

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:55:17 +0000

After postponing it for 2-3 weeks due to work load, this Sunday me and my friend Sameer, finally managed to take some time out in our schedule and go on a trek to Kondana Caves. I have decided to do such type of treks at least once a month to refresh my mind. The visual library in the mind gets updated and it becomes really a good educational exercise too. I get to absorb new things, texture, colours and concepts. This helps me to keep my style fresh and also helps me break out of monotonous work environment where I stare at computer screen most of the time during work. I also get to collect rich reference photos and ideas for later use. It is really like recharging your battery.

The Trip

We started at 8.30 A.M in the morning and after riding for about 54 Km we reached there at 11.00 A.M. Since this is not monsoon season, there were not many tourists. We parked our scooter at the base in an open area and started to climb up. Since I am now not used to walking large distance or climbing hills, this trek exhausted me in the beginning. It was not that hard but I noticed my stamina has decreased too much. I need more treks like this to get accustomed to this type of excursion.

Sunset - landscape painting warm-up

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 08:01:49 +0000

A quick weekend warm-up painting in Krita. I forgot to record a time-lapse now. But I thinking of doing a draw-along tutorial for this. Buy a print of this painting here .

final painting

Night - Time-lapse Painting in Krita

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 15:48:00 +0530

I tried to paint a personification of the night. Beautiful calm and romantic yet sometimes eerie and daunting. I think the beautiful side won in this painting. Here is the process. May be next time I’ll move more towards the fear aspect. You can buy the print for this painting on my INPRNT page.

Here is the final image

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Background Music - music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

One With Nature - Time-lapse Painting in Krita

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 15:48:00 +0530

It is Friday again and I went on a small hike with my friend yesterday, as we were walking amidst the forest on a small trail, the calmness of the surrounding nature seemed almost meditative to me. It instantly drained all my stress built up during the week. This painting is inspired by one of the spots we encountered while walking in the forest.

Here is the final image

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Background Music - Meditative Space by MaxKoMusic | https://maxkomusic.com/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nature sound effects from chosic.com | License - Public domain

Virtual plienair from streetview - somewhere in Tokushima Japan

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 18:48:00 +0530

It’s friday and what is a better way to wind up the weekend than painting a landscape in Krita. Did a quick 2½ hr session. Fullscreen mode in krita with all desktop notifications off, mobile switched to do not disturb mode and some soothing music along with it, just pure bliss. Do you paint like this for relaxing yourself?

Here is the final image

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Background Music - Music - Summer Memories by - extenz (https://soundcloud.com/extenz) License - Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

How to Draw a lemon slice - Krita digital painting tutorial - Easy step by step for beginners

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 12:48:00 +0530

In this video we learn how to create a lemon slice in Krita from scratch. I try to explain it in easy step by step manner so that you can draw along with me while watching the video. The goal here is not to make the coolest lemon illustration but to learn krita while creating something along with me. So feel free to draw by pausing the video

Episode Credits

Video recorded by raghukamath - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License
Background Music - “Groove Grove” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Made with Krita, Kdenlive & Audacity

Digital Art With Free Software Episode-06

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 12:48:00 +0530

This series is about creating digital art in free software. For those who don’t know what free software is please read this. This is the 6th episode in the series of tutorials for beginners in digital painting as well as Krita.

Episode Notes

In this lesson we explore various masks in Krita and also learn more about Selection Masks and how to use them in digital painting.

Episode Credits

Video recorded by raghukamath - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License
Music - Haratanaya Sree by Veena Kinhal - via Wikimedia Commons - CC-0 license
Sitar by Kaiho - Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license - Freesound.org
Swooshes by Dodgy C - CC-0 license - Freesound.org
Made with Krita, Kdenlive & Audacity

Waiting For Unlock...

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 11:00:00 +0530

Some school buses parked since start of the pandemic near my house. Its been a while since children saw school. Instead of a landscape I thought why not paint some vehicles, so I did this outdoor study.

Here is the final image

Few details

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Summer Fun - Timelapse

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 11:00:00 +0530

I am sure we all have done this at some point.

Here is the final image

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Virtual Plein-Air Wandering At Daybreak

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 18:48:00 +0530

Stumbled upon a wonderful street view on mapcrunch, so did a virtual plein-air study with it.

Here is the final image

completed painting

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Background Music - Chasing Daylight by Scott Buckley - Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Master Chef Timelapse

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 18:48:00 +0530

Here is the final image

Credits

Artwork by raghukamath licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Intro Music - Stream Countdown 10s & Background Music - Forest Wak by by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com). Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
Intro Background Video by Miguel Á. Padriñán. Licensed under Pexels License

How to auto colorize line art in Krita?

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 18:48:00 +0530

This is the second episode in the quick tip series. Let us check how to add clipping masks in Krita.

How To Add Clipping Masks In Krita?

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 18:48:00 +0530

This is the first episode in the quick tip series. Let us check how to add clipping masks in Krita.

Seamless Handmade Textures

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 12:17:00 +0530

I am sharing these free seamless handmade or hand-painted textures.These were made while I was working on various projects. Not all are hand-painted some are scanned and prepared from the original item, for example, the cartridge texture is a scan of a paper, some might have made by using resources in the public domain. These are shared under CC-BY-SA license, so you are free to reuse modify or share these I’ll be updating and adding more to this page as and when I make a new texture.

001-cement-texture-hires

002-brick-seamless-hires

003-leaves-seamless-hires

004-cartridge-texture-hires

005-mdf-seamless-hires

006-wall-plaster-hires

007-mosaic-tiles-hires

If you find these useful share them with your fellow artists and spread the word, I will also be excited to see how other artists have used these in their artwork. These are free to download but if you like to support me by donating money, you can use my PayPal link.

Digital art with foss episode 5

Sat, 02 Mar 2019 20:48:00 +0530

This series is about creating digital art in free software. For those who don’t know what free software is please read this. This is the fifth episode in the series on basics of painting in krita.

Episode Notes

In this episode we learn about Layers, their types and way to manage them in Krita. We also see a basic and simple setup of layers required to create a drawing in Krita.

Episode Credits

Background Music - Mridangam Jati by - Ajaysm
Licensed under CC-0.

Designing Posters With Free Software

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 14:54:44 +0530

A few months back I was asked to design some poster for a local Free Software Foundation Event. Richard M Stallman was visiting our country, and my friend Abhas Abhinav wanted to put up some posters and banners. Due to me being down with flu I couldn’t do the number of banners and posters that I initially intended to do. However, I managed to create two posters for RMS’ talk in Bangalore. This is a short note down of the process that I typically use to create my artwork with F/LOSS (Free / Libre Open Source Software) tools. Although many artists successfully use Free Software to create artworks, I repeatedly encounter many comments in discussion forums claiming that free software is not made for creative work. This post is also my effort in spreading awareness that one can do professional work with the help of F/LOSS tools. I chose this project to document my process because it is not encumbered with NDA as my other ongoing projects and I felt that this topic is closer to Free Software.

Sketches

After understanding the initial requirement from Abhas, I sat down to visualize some concepts. I am not that great of a copywriting person, so in order to get some copy material, I started reading the FSF website. Given that I was already late to create anything, I wanted something that would be done in 2 days time, while simultaneously working with other projects. I started sketching some rough layouts. From a lot of 5 layouts, I liked three. I scanned them using Skanlite, these sketches were very rough at that moment and would need proper lay outing and design, but they were a good base for me to work.

Digital art with foss episode 4

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 22:48:00 +0530

In this video, I am going to talk about digital brushes. In real life brushes, pens, knives are the tools used to apply and manipulate colours on canvas, similarly in digital painting we have a brush tool that helps to add and manipulate pixels. First, we will see what digital brushes are made of, which will help us in tweaking and creating our own brushes in future

Digital brushes in Krita

Episode Credits

Sitar music in the background by Kaiho Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

Digital art with foss episode 3

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 21:48:00 +0530

In this episode we will learn how to navigate around the canvas in Krita. This video will have lots of shortcut so for your convenience I have prepared a PDF with list of these shortcuts as a PDF with all the shortcuts mentioned in this video, you can download it from the link here.

Episode Credits

Sitar music in the background by Kaiho Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

Digital art with foss episode 2

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 21:48:00 +0530

This series is about creating digital art in free software. For those who don’t know what free software is please read this.

Workspace and Dockers

Episode Notes

Krita’s flexible workspace is really easy to customise according to our needs. In this video we see how to customise and create our own workspace. We also learn about dockers in Krita.

Episode Credits

Swaramandal by luckylittleraven Licensed under CC0.
Sitar music in the background by Kaiho Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

Digital art with foss episode 1

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 15:48:00 +0530

This series is about creating digital art in free software. For those who don’t know what free software is please read this. This is the first episode in the series on basics of painting in krita.

Episode Notes

Krita is a free and open source digital painting application. We take a tour of Krita’s interface and learn how to create a new document in Krita.

Twilight orchestra in Inkscape

Sun, 26 Feb 2017 12:48:00 +0530

I mostly use Krita for my professional and personal illustration work. Every now and then when I require vector illustrations I turn towards Inkscape.

I have done some professional illustration in Inkscape but they were not so detailed in nature. I am trying to bring more and more vector art into my portfolio. This piece is just to practice and polish my Inkscape skills. I already know the concepts of vector illustration and have used a vector illustration software such as Adobe illustrator and Corel draw. So learning Inkscape is just a matter of learning the new ways or rather Inkscape’s way of doing the things which I used to do with illustrator or Corel draw.

I am drawing an owl which is directing an orchestra in the twilight of a moon. I tried to keep the colors to minimum may be around shades of blue and yellow and slight oranges here and there.

At first I scan my initial very rough and ugly sketch of an Owl on a A5 notepad paper. For scanning my artworks I use a software called Xsane. It is very feature complete and simple to use and does what I want without the need of tinkering too much.

Brush pack for Krita V2.0

Sat, 12 Nov 2016 00:30:00 +0530

In my previous post, I had shared some of the brushes that I use while painting in Krita. This is the second release of that brush pack. In this release I have added some more presets to the pack and also tweaked some of the brushes to utilise newly added parameter in Krita such asratio. I have also reduced the brush tip images used in the pack and utilised the default auto tips. An example configuration can be seen in the image below.

Brush tip setting in Krita

I also refreshed the brush icons a bit in this release.

Brush previews

You can download the brush pack from here.

To install, just unzip the contents of the zip file, then in Krita go to settings > Manage resources, then click on open resource folder button. A folder will be opened in the file explorer then copy the contents inside the unzipped folder namely folders named - brushes and paintoppresets, then paste and merge the contents to the folders inside the resources folder. Then restart Krita, the brushes are ready to use, just search for pack01 in the brush filter. Go here for more clear instructions.

This time I have also created a bundle file for this pack, you can download the bundle file from here.

Brush Pack for Krita

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 22:17:00 +0530

In my previous post, I mentioned that I switched from Photoshop to Krita. The workflow is much better and, I really enjoy working in this application. The brush engine is very robust and one case lose almost hours playing and experimenting with it. There are in total 16 brush engines in Krita, it can be somewhat overwhelming for a new user at first but you will definitely be surprised the level of customisation it gives.

There is a lot of room for experiments and happy accidents. One thing to note is that in Krita the brush dap is called brush tip and the preset themselves are called paint top presets. I like to keep my brushes to a minimum number, I create brushes on the fly and delete unused brushes. I am sharing the most basic brushes which I use almost daily. Most of them belong to Pixel brush engine and two of them are Bristle brush engines.

Various brushes in the pack

You can download the brush pack from here.

To install, just unzip the contents of the zip file, then in Krita got to settings > Manage resources, then click on open resource folder button. A folder will be opened in the file explorer then copy the contents inside the unzipped folder namely folders named - brushes and paintoppresets, then paste and merge the contents to the folders inside the resources folder. Then restart Krita, the brushes are ready to use, just search for pack01 in the brush filter. Go here for more clear instructions.