In Conversation with Jens

Last week I interviewed Jens Reuterberg, a Swedish Krita artist. And the same week he contributed to our project many artworks and which I used to create new products on the shop. With now the end of our summer term approaching, I never realized how quickly the time flew. It has been a wonderful experience to be a part of Krita community. Below is Jens recent favorite work “Monster Monkey”. Read on for the conversation –

Kritashop: New Arrivals!

This weekend we have loaded the Kritashop with many new attractive products. For the products this week, we collaborated with Krita artist Enrico Guarnieri and created many new designs for throw pillows. Also, we now have a Krita icon tee in the shop which you can order in a color of your choice!

We’d love to hear back from you guys. Let us know what you’d like to see more of in Kritashop! Below are the snapshots of a few of the new products –

New Merchandise

This week we introduced in our store new products with more variety this time including pillows, t-shirts, laptop sleeves… and more!
This time we had the collaboration of Tago Franceschi, Coyau and Nayobe Millis (our youngest artist), thanks to all of them to allow us to make great stuff with their artworks! You can see all the products on the Kritashop. Click on more to see all the new products sample images!

In Conversation with Elena

This week I got a chance to interview Elena from Italy, who has an amazing spirit to learn. She is a Computer Engineer by profession and a painter by hobby. She is learning anatomy at present and is also collaborating with us for the Krita Shop on zazzle. Click on “read more” to read the entire conversation with this amazing budding artist!

In Conversation with Andreas Raninger

Today we got a chance to interview Andreas Raninger, an IT-Technician from Sweden who paints for a hobby. Even though he is working full time, he finds out time for painting and even paint book covers! Awesome, right? Read the entire conversation below, here is his work “Master and Apprentice”.

Hi Andreas, Would you like to tell us something about yourself?
I’m living in Sweden.I’m currently working as a IT-Technician in a company called IT-Hantverkarna. Painting in my free time.

So, you paint as a hobby artist then? In any case how would you define the importance of painting in your daily life?
I’m a hobby artist but sometimes I paint book covers. I paint every moment I get the chance but when I’m working full time I seldom have the time to sit down and paint for longer sessions.

When and how did you end up trying digital painting for the first time?
I have been painting digital since the Amiga days and Deluxe paint but was never serious about it. I bought my first drawing pad five years ago but I thought that I had more control using real paint and brushes. In late 2011 I bought a Wacom Intuos 4 L and was impressed by the precision and started to do more serious work. I discovered how comfortable it was to paint digitally. I haven’t touched the oil colors after that.

An interesting look back! Now, what is it that makes you choose digital over the traditional painting?
First of all health and economy. No more thinners, dirty clothes and hands. I can work in a limited space and I don’t have buy new materials all the time. I can change my compositions and try out new ideas all the time without repainting and worry about material costs and drying time.

How did you first find out about open source communities? What is your opinion about them?
I started with Linux in 1998 and been using different distributions since then. I never cared about communities because I have always been shy with people I can’t see in front of me.

Have you worked for any FOSS project or contributed in some way?
No. Well, my main goal when uploading paintings done with Krita on Deviantart is to show others what can be done in Krita. I hope that I have contributed in that way somehow.

I think it certainly does count and it must have helped many artists new to Krita. Now, how did you find out about Krita?
I was looking for painting software that had serious tools and a humble support behind it. I changed OS to Linux and found out about Krita on the internet.

What was your first take on it?
I was pretty lost painting the first months because Krita has a lot of features. But that’s no problem, there are really helpful tutorials out there written by other artists. At first Krita was painfully slow but that has improved dramatically.

Kudos to our brilliant team on this note!
So, what do you love about Krita?
First of all, the people behind Krita. I’ve never experienced any limitations in the software when it comes to techniques. It’s all there and I can compile it with the newest code every day when I come home from work.

What do you think needs improvement in Krita? Also, anything that you really hate?
Memory efficiency is primary. Krita eats memory like crazy at a serious resolution. Adjustments should be instant like in Photoshop. When tweaking color and other things you tend to forget pretty fast how the last setting looked when you are waiting for an update of the new one.

In your opinion, what sets Krita apart from the other tools that you use?
No strange wizards and tools, it gets the job done the way I want it. You are the painter not the program. I can grow with it and it grows with me without pushing me into corners. Krita has a soft feeling that I can’t explain. It’s has more analog feeling to it than Photoshop that feels more digital.

Guess we’re on the right track in our efforts in that case!
Well, if you had to pick one favorite of all your work done in Krita so far, what would it be?
Unlimited.

What is it that you like about it? What brushes did you use in it?
I managed to catch the feeling and put it on screen in the way I wanted. Mostly basic brushes from the default set:
Basic Airbrush
Basic paint Shade
David Revoys Glow tool from the 2.1 brushset (Really good brushes)
And some Photohop brushes from Vincdesign that I converted to Krita.

Thank you very much Andreas for taking out time for this interview. I hope you had as much fun as I had interviewing you.
You can find more about Andreas on his deviant here.

In conversation with Phillip Koops

So, I got this another opportunity to interview yet another wonderful Krita artist Phillip. It was an interesting interview where some of his answers left me thinking over them. I’d like to quote one particular sentence here — “I think it always has to be a hobby, the minute it feels like it’s a job – the fun goes away.” So true, right? Interviewing is so fun!

He has also collaborated with us for the Krita webshop and did a “Krita Bear” artwork for us. I know, I know, this bear(below) is hopelessly cute or maybe handsome! 😀

Krita Webshop: New Designs!

And And And, we did the much awaited!

Finally we uploaded our first lot of merchandise designs on the Krita webshop. Really excited to find out how everyone finds it. *Fingers Crossed*

With the three new designs now available on several merchandise options, the products are up for grab! Go and visit us here and we’d like to here your reviews about what more you’d like to see there, how you find the products and what you’re ordering! Yes, we’d like to know it all! 😉
Tell us via comments on zazzle!

In Conversation with Enrico Guarnieri

Hello,

For this entire July month we’ve been contacting artists for collaboration for the webshop and for the interviews. Now after the work of 20-25 days, we have started to receive interview responses and artworks for the webshop collaboration. It’s been a wonderful experience thus far. Today I’m going to share with you all an interview with Enrico Guarnieri who is a Krita artist. You could also read this article here.

Enrico is also working with us on the Krita Webshop. Together, we will bring you a lot of new merchandise designs on the webshop in coming months!
For now, enjoy reading the interview below! The image below is his krita artwork named “Metamorphosis”

                                                      

Looking back to June: Week 2 and 3

Hello,

Well I thought of doing this “Looking back to June” as a series of posts until I get back to the present status of my work.

It was my summer vacation for the past two months (May and June), during that time I was in Delhi taking an extra course . I was more free there than I am now(college reopened in July, so pretty hectic). It was the second week of June, and we thought of charting out a plan of all the tasks that are to be covered under the 3 month span. As the project isn’t a core coding project and there are a lot of diverse responsibilities involved, it was necessary to have one to avoid the chaos while working.

After we were done with the sort-of  to-do list, I took up on the task of familiarizing more with the community. What I mean is, I am not a digital artist so I was finding it difficult to look at things with the perspective similar to what others had in the community. I studied a little bit about Krita tool features, installed it, read about the community history, started remaining more active on the #krita channel. It did help and as the time passed, I started to get a hold of the way everybody thinks around. There came a time – I think in week 3 or 4 of June – that I saw my initial contribution documents and it seemed so naive!

Now, more familiar with the community I took up the next task to follow the Krita art in order to understand Krita artists better. Deviant was a great help! It was around this time that we started to plan and start the work on artist collaboration. Since then it has been a part of our daily work.

The response of the artists has been amazing thus far for the contribution. What strikes me the most is how kind and supportive they are of Krita. Talking of present, it has been almost a month since we started the collaboration work and it is still going strong! B)

Contacting artists has been and is a wonderful experience. Also, we have been interviewing the artists. Maria has been doing a lot of them and has posted many interviews on krita.org. Also, you could check them out on her blog here.

Cheers! 🙂

Looking back to June: Week 1

Hello readers!

I’m running a little late in blogging than the pace of the work that we have been doing. Well, let’s go back and talk about with what did I start my work.

So, may 27^th and I was selected, after the congratulatory wind-up on IRC #Krita channel, mails from Boudewijn (mentor) and from OPW team; I got to know my project partner Maria(she’s from Barcelona! Wow, right?). So, it was decided to broaden the horizons of the work under our project as now there were two interns instead of one (yes, lucky!).

Well, the due date of starting the intern was June 15 but we started to contribute right after the selection. The project is so exciting we couldn’t help.

A new channel was set for this project #krita-shop and we took a little time to distribute and plan the project ahead. I took the Zazzle store as my first task. Back then, Zazzle allowed code customization which helped those who knew CSS, HTML to give their stores a unique feel.  I got on with it and the theme was decided to be Krita website inspired. Logic was simple – to keep the uniformity.

So, I did the code formatting and got it look almost like the website theme, without CSS3 support! Also, I familiarized myself with the Zazzle product creation requirements, ways, categories etc. Planned a thing or two on how would we go about collecting the artworks to product creation.

Sad part is, around 20-25 days later after I was done with the store and ready for posting artworks, we got the news that Zazzle will stop supporting the customizations and is undergoing a makeover. Well, that did came us a surprise but the good thing that has come out, Zazzle interface does look better!

Talking of today, this week we are going to upload new merchandise designs on the shop! Yay! 😀