Tutorial: Grayscale to Color - Krita Digital Painting - Character design

[@PauPolys]

your accent is the best, thanks for being a true krita evangelizer, your tutorials and videos rock!

[@meanmole3212]

Being a walking treasury of expensive gear that she is, I'd name her Lira because she looks like she is about to drop more coins than Sonic if you slay her.

[@DavidRevoy]

😃 Good name! And I really like the details about it. Thank you.

[@maabed1022]

Just wanted to express my appreciation. I’m not an artist and I accidentally stumbled upon this video. It’s truly inspiring to see someone care this much about their craft. Merci infiniment!

[@DavidRevoy]

Thank you very much for your support! It really helps 🥰🥰🥰

[@TheRockNatural]

Thanks to you, I'm starting to understand better how to draw accurately

[@guiseedma]

I was rummaging around KZbin about Digital Glazing and Grisailles for past days and you just uploaded this 😮. Thanks you

[@DerPylz]

Very beautiful and clear explanation of this workflow! Always nice to see a new video from you :)

[@relaxmusic77]

Merci infiniment pour cette vidéo qui, en 20 minutes, apporte une TONNE de savoir et d'astuces ! Merci vraiment pour tous ces partages.

[@Tutterzoid]

Love your artwork and explanation of how you got the effect

[@drabbitz2319]

Nouveau vidéo! Parfait pour prendre mon café du Samedi matin!

[@Landro_Acardo]

Time to try the new blender modes. Let's gooo! Also I really like your approach, using just a few layers and focusing on color relativity. The result is very natural!

[@blackstar_1069]

Yay! happy caturday David, nice to woke up to one of ur vids 🤘😻

[@dosantec]

Thanks for all David

[@kheharharaythus3323]

It's good see a tutorial from you. Thank you.

[@MAXIMThefirstandlast]

This helped me A lot!, Thank you so much!, i adore your videos and your process, Thank you 🌟

[@ishantsmax786]

You are an amazing person. Your eagerness to learn and teach others is admirable. The world needs more individuals like you. Sending love from India❤

[@dormitria]

Thank you!

[@astro58685]

Tes vidéos m'ont énormément apporté, merci beaucoup David, tes méthodes sont très intuitives, bien expliquées et super cool! Grâce à toi je me suis énormément amélioré et en peu de temps ❤❤

[@DavidRevoy]

Merci pour le retour ! Ça fait trop plaisir à lire. 👍

[@Mike-hr5nn]

This looks so good 😮 I need to try it. Thank you so much!

[@marsereverlyn]

Amazing and instructive as always 🫰

[@Trefillis]

Encore un super tuto !

[@DavidRevoy]

Merci!

[@bileloulia432]

Excellent David! en ce moment je passe de mon style d'art véctorizé au Digital painting pour des Book Covers projets! et cette vidéo m'a vraiment surpris car je ne savais pas que peindre avec Values et Grayscale vas aider tant que ca! Thank you so much! this helped a lot and I hope someday I will be able to reward you for this tutorial ♥

[@DavidRevoy]

merci, et bon courage pour les couvs!

[@SeidrSkald]

I am so glad I found your tutorials. I've just started using Krita and your videos are incredibly helpful. Thank you!

[@dookcurruff9047]

wow thank u david these tutorials are the best to a new artist like me

[@uctm0fgwitdtbrp1-zqlm9sq6]

I like the examples to explain blending modes like screen is for sky light. Often I will scroll the modes to see what looks best

[@s-o-o-z]

Thank you for making another helpful video. I'm sure I'll return to this one many times, just like all the other David Revoy videos in my favourites list.

[@DavidRevoy]

Thank you Sooz!

[@ArneBab]

Wow, that’s awesome! I didn’t know Krita could do this!

[@jeffreypostma6832]

Wonderful demonstration. The pace is perfect, great detail and tips all the way through!

[@DavidRevoy]

Thank you!

[@ElectricKitty]

disclaimer almost murdered me

[@_clowncircus]

Thanks for the video, I had just finished a grayscale drawing and I didn't know how to add color to it 🙏

[@jcbritobr]

Thats very nice and usefull.

[@olivierbastien1680]

Great Video!!! I'm working on both debian and Ubuntu and I love Krita, Blender and Darktable!!

[@DavidRevoy]

Good choice! I also have 3 Debian at home (1 headless for my home server, and two Gnome on living room) very good O.S!

[@olivierbastien1680]

@@DavidRevoy 🐧🐧🐧🐧

[@chat2842]

Super vidéo, merci beaucoup ! Elle m'aurait été très utile en décembre dernier, quand je m'arrachais les cheveux sur une commande... J'ai carrément paniqué car c'était la 1ère fois que j'utilisais cette technique (quelle idée !), et je n'arrivais pas à me dépatouiller avec le mode "color". J'ai fini par m'en sortir avec le mode "overlay", en remettant des couches en mode "normal" pour corriger, bref, une vraie prise de tête ! Le rendu final était ok, mais avec tes conseils j'aurais pu arriver à mieux sans avoir envie de bouffer mon stylet ! Je retiens pour la prochaine fois :)

[@natbast]

Спасибо за интересный и познавательный туториал! :)

[@cocorosmarin9739]

Thank you so much David for your videos. I'm learning so much every time I watch your good explanations. I'm always struggling with naming my characters, too. 🙈 I sit there looking at them (sometimes a long time) and listen and ask and listen and talk to them and listen.... a bit weird I guess, but it's ok, that's me. 😅 The first name that come in looking at your character here was: Malina.

[@DavidRevoy]

Thank you for your words and for the name too!

[@MeekNotWeak77]

Fantastic! This was so helpful, thank you!

[@jahn_star]

You are the goat, David! Thank you.

[@shaytal100]

She looks beautiful and her name is Elsa! Don't listen to anybody else. It is Elsa! Great video with great tips. Thanks David!

[@DavidRevoy]

Thanks for the name, good one. I have really good propositions on the list. It will be hard to choose!

[@NaeemAwan-z2r]

Buhut achi banay ha

[@manaoxygen5023]

Merci pour tes explications. C'est super clair. Pouce bleu et je m'abonne.

[@DavidRevoy]

Merci!

[@lumart98]

Very nice!! I am your new fan 😍

[@sleepyprinny]

Estelle!

[@DavidRevoy]

😻

[@hasanhuseyindincer5334]

👍👍

[@shiggydiggy6847]

So grayscale, duplicate. Change duplicated layer blending mode to colour, give some undertone with colour filter (ctrl + B). Then go to the grayscale underneath and do level adjustment (ctrl + L), you can leave it as a mask so it's non-destructive. Then paint colorus on the colour layer. Do you have some rules of thumb for how saturated or desatured colours you use on the colour layer?

[@DavidRevoy]

Yes! About the saturation, I still don't have a super logic way to handle it. I just observed it's good to not saturate much because it's easy to saturate later (but desaturating a piece that screams saturation everywhere is more difficult). So, I build the saturation slowly.

[@laurentlabede]

Slt ! Très cool ton perso ! Je vois que tu utilises Fedora, je l'ai installé en dual, mais avec KDE Plasma et je n'arrive pas à retrouver la même sensation de dessin que sous windows. Quand je déplace le stylet, j'ai comme une sorte d'inertie avec le curseur, très léger, mais quand même présent, j'ai désactivé l'accélération de la souris, c'est un peu mieux, mais pas non plus parfait. Si tu as des pistes !? (Huion Kamvas 13 en utilisation tablette classique) Ryzen 7, 64Go RAM, NVidia RTX 3060Ti , driver "nouveau/Proprio" pareil. Je devrais tester avec Gnome peut-être...

[@DavidRevoy]

Hello! Cool :) Il peut y avoir tant de 'problèmes' possible sur Linux. Ici, j'utilise l'Appimage fait par les dev (ça reduit pas mal de bug), j'ai aussi une carte video AMD avec le driver libre Mesa, et j'utilise la session X11 uniquement (sous Wayland, Krita est dans une fenêtre XWayland, et ça fait surcouche, je ressent aussi quand j'essai). Avec Fedora qui va devenir Wayland seulement à la F40, je vais déménager. Probablement du coté d'une base Debian ou Mint avec KDE tant que les dev de Krita n'auront pas migrer vers une base Wayland-native.

[@jonataleite]

​​@@DavidRevoyamigo muito bom o vídeo. Falo do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Muito obrigado. Ótimas dicas e passo-a-passo. Permita-me fazer uma observação. Não encare negativamente por favor. Sei que você colocou 2 visões, diagonal de frente esquerda e diagonal de trás direita. Porém, na visão de trás o Machado está na posição errada sendo segurado em cima pela mão esquerda, e o escudo também está na posição errada, não aparecendo a ponta inferior do escudo que fica para trás no braço. Gostaria de ver um vídeo seu mostrando como corrigir isso. Sucesso aí!

[@DavidRevoy]

@@jonataleite Hey thank you! And yes I noticed. I probably wanted to get the two axe on both view parralal for the composition. Fixing it can be a fun video topic. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@jonataleite]

@@DavidRevoy obrigado por responder. Foi a intenção, a ideia do vídeo. Falei porque parece também um espelho mas, o escudo destrói essa ideia. Então como sei que seu foco era o assunto da colorização, resolvi dar a sugestão. Novamente obrigado! E aguardo novo vídeo!

[@laurentlabede]

Ok, merci, Yep ! Je suis sur X11 aussi, car j'avais vu que les tablettes n'étaient pas encore bien gérées sous Wayland, je vais tester autre chose pour voir.

[@shihoritsukiyomi]

You have a new subscriber :)

[@SeverusSnope]

Hello David, amazing artwork as always ^^ I am a bit confused regarding the silhouette stage and the lambert lighting stage. In the silhouette stage are you considering a light source?

[@DavidRevoy]

Hey, yes, because I have many automatism that sync at the same time (at silhouette I also take care of anatomy, perspective and design/volumes). But the subtle light I do is not really a directional one, it's a global one very soft and diffuse. It's not thought as a direction yet, or a particular point in space. It's more imanent; by shaping slight variation of grayscale at this step it greats this ambient dim soft light.

[@dobridimitrov8024]

Which colour profile is better for digital comics panels or illustrations- RGB or CMYK? What colour deep is better - 8-bit color or 16-bit color? I work on digital illustrations for book. preparated to printing.

[@DavidRevoy]

Here I would to first get a colorimeter and calibrate/profile your monitor(s). Then contact your printer or publisher to know what type of CMYK ICC profile they'll use. If you don't have it yet, you can ask author who work for this type of publishing what they commonly use. Then I would setup a sRGB 8bit, with a softproofing to this CMYK profile for my main file. The softproofing will inform me about the color going out of gamut. Once the artwork is completed, I would export a special variant converted as CMYK in the profile of the printer, 8bit. This one would receive special optimisations for not getting cyan dots in the yellow, or deeper blacks, etc...

[@АлександрКочуро-ы2э]

👍👍🙂

[@theboys5031]

Thank you, do you have tips on how to make stylistic characters?

[@DavidRevoy]

Hey, I think a key is to do classical study and anatomy (realistic) to be after in real control of what you stylise and for what reason later. So many things can be stylised: shapes, shading, anatomy, rendering, visible brush strokes...etc... I remember when I was younger I was worrying that studying realism would erase my style. Don't worry about it: from my own (biased) experience, style is like the color of your hair: it's difficult to change it or decide about it. Even you temporary tint it, it will always grow back later with the same good old tonality. Have fun in your experiementations!

[@theboys5031]

@@DavidRevoyok thx

[@Miraihi]

Another great tutorial David! What do you think about gradient maps for coloring?

[@DavidRevoy]

Gradient maps are great! But they also have a danger: you can map arbitraly gradients to non-corresponding values (eg. say a blue-to-white on a black and white image). As you saw in my usage, I'm try to preserve my greyscale values a lot − I even don't trust the way Color Balance filter affect the values (that's why I'm using it on a duplicate with a "Color" blending mode, so I'm sure it's affecting only Y part of HSY).

[@trumpet43samurai]

Hi David! I’ve tried this technique and it was a lot of fun but I had a question: the eyes of my character seem too dark in the whites, how can I bring them up aside from painting over them?

[@DavidRevoy]

Thanks! In this case, I think a little glazing with white and "Overlay" blending mode can solve the issue. But probably with a brush having a gentle opacity or they'll quickly look like a light source :)

[@trumpet43samurai]

@@DavidRevoy Oh that makes sense ill give that a go

[@dantheplanner]

🙂👍

[@renealbrechtsen9743]

I want to paint characters in a similar style, but how can I add anatomical details like this ? Would you recommend doing that with lines after figuring out the silhouette ?

[@DavidRevoy]

In general, if you go without reference for the anatomical detail, it will require you to have studied and memorized them. That's something I did (training on my sketchbook), no perfect, but I start to have a good library of volumes in mind. If you are learning them, the best is to open a reference on the side (it can be a body standing, or a character, even with another view angle) and try to read the volume, and them reconstruct it with your view angle. It's a game of sculpting and understanding/knowing the shapes.

[@berendtuin5488]

A perfect video David. How long did You take to create these beauties?

[@DavidRevoy]

Thanks! Oh, I stopped to count hours :D Probably too much!

[@tiranicus69]

Bonjour David, je voudrais suggérer qu'elle s'appelle Lean.

[@DavidRevoy]

Bonjour, très jolie!

[@clem7334]

je comprends pas pourquoi mes couleurs diffèrent avec le filtre "couleur". Celles-ci ne sont pas fidèles à la couleur que je sélectionne dans la palette. Pourquoi ? Merci.

[@DavidRevoy]

Le filtre couleur n'influe que sur la teinte, mais pas la valeur. Donc normalement, tu devrais avoir la même teinte mais dans un camaïeu en fonction du niveau de gris qui est en dessous. Pour certains jaunes et oranges, ça peut développer toute la palette des brun/marrons/ocre.

[@clem7334]

@@DavidRevoy ok merci de la réponse.

[@isabelat.597]

Merci, David. I'd name her Pandora.

[@DavidRevoy]

😍 That's a great name. Probably one that would require a big box like a backpack for the design (as for the Saint-Seya armors). I'll keep the idea.

[@thomasfrans1185]

O.P.A.B.T.S 😄

[@dab3719]

very nice

[@nyankrauss]

The name "Noelle" is popular among armored girls >:3

[@DavidRevoy]

Oh, good one. Thanks! I had a Lionnelle and a Estelle on the list. Ending with -elle is tempting! I'll debrief that later in a future video.

[@crisd.4341]

I used the "color" method, but the colors do not respect the chosen color. they look washed out. also if I choose a dark color, for example: "dark brown" the color is pale, almost grey. I do not understand.

[@DavidRevoy]

Hi, the "color" blending mode influencate only on the tint; the darkness you select is not taken into account: it's the gray color underneath that will be 'the value' of the color. A brown can look like a peach color if the gray color is too bright. A orange can look like a brown if the gray is too dark. You need more work in the variation of gray and their values before coloring.

[@crisd.4341]

@@DavidRevoy Ah!! OK. I have to train well on values. Do you happen to have a video in your channel where you explain how to understand and obtain the appropriate values ​​as needed. Sorry for the english (use google translate).

[@DavidRevoy]

@@crisd.4341 No problem with your english, it's good. I don't have a video about it, it's still for me a work in progress about understanding the "weight" in value of colors and how to organise them to get a good brillance of colors. You'll find many videos by other creators on the topic, I hope one day I'll have something I found myself to tell about it.

[@maxnemerson]

How about the name Leyla?

[@TheCriDesign]

I use the color method, but the colors are staggered.

[@DavidRevoy]

Hey, yes it's a possible effect if the values of grayscale underneath are or grayish (then it all look grays and saturation pops weirdly) or if the values are too contrasted (lot of burnt black and over exposed white). It takes a bit of practise to aim at a grayscale that has good values for being recolored. It worth the training :)

[@Slime-Sensei]

How to flip canvas on MacBook? 😢

[@DavidRevoy]

Hey, the default on Krita is the 'M' key.

[@hewpow]

How much ram do you have on your main pc?

[@DavidRevoy]

32GB; you can find all my spec here: www.davidrevoy.com/article806/review-my-digital-painting-workstation-pc-on-gnu-linux

[@uberartist538]

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥🐐🐐🐐🐐✏️🙏🙏🙏

[@clem7334]

Tes vidéos sont super MAIS ce serait bien de parler français de temps en temps.

[@DavidRevoy]

Désolé, c'est purement économique : le jour où j'ai plus de 50% de donation de la part de francophones, je considérerai. Pour le moment, le budget temps que j'ai pour faire ces vidéos vient des donations de l'audience, car j'ai un crédit, une famille à nourrir et chaque journée coute une blinde, même si je ne fais rien. Pour donner une idée, les français ne représentent à peine que 4% de l'audience qui suit mon travail.

[@clem7334]

@@DavidRevoy Je comprends tes raisons. MAIS (😅) peut-être pourrais-tu utiliser l'IA pour traduire automatiquement tes vidéos en français et même dans beaucoup d'autres langues. Cela pourrait considérablement élargir ton audience.

[@DavidRevoy]

@@clem7334 Malheuresement, l'IA ne fait pas ça encore automatiquement (ou bien le fait de manière médiocre et mal, la tradution c'est complexe) sinon tu penses bien que Google/KZbin l'aurait déjà proposé comme outil pour décupler leur catalogue. En tout cas, du contenu en français voudrait dire une nouvelle chaine, de la relecture/corrections des traduction automatique, j'aime pas les voix des IA, donc réenregistrement aussi. Bref... une journée par semaine de boulot en moins et j'en ai que 7 comme tout le monde 🤓 ... Aussi, je pense que si il y a vraiment une audience large et prête à soutenir un ou une créateur Francophone sur Linux/Krita , je pense que ça serait déjà un créneaux occupé tellement l'offre sur KZbin est saturé. Il y a pas mal de vidéo Krita en Français avec des Tipees/Utip/etc; mais je ne pense pas que ceux qui ont fait ça soit assez rémunéré pour pour en vivre. Donc une autre option est d'aller leur donner à eux et repartager leur boulot pour aider à les faire connaitre. Après, mon bac à sable est ouvert: toutes mes vidéos, toutes, sont en license Creative Commons Attribution, ou parfois ShareAlike. Si tu y vois vraiment un créneau et que l'aventure te tente, c'est légal de reprendre mes vidéos en respectant la licence et de faire un dérivé avec un audio différent. De mon côté, je préfère garder du temps pour la création de BD 🐱 Merci en tout cas pour les retours et bon dimanche soir !

[@clem7334]

@@DavidRevoy Ok merci pour ces explications exhaustives. Certaines IA de transcription commencent à être efficaces mais sont relativement onéreuses. Bon dimanche également et bravo pour ton travail.

[@guymadelaine8195]

QUEL DOMAGE TES TUTOS QUI NE SONT PAS EN FRANCAIS

[@DavidRevoy]

Ils sont en Creative Comons, si tu veux les télécharger, refaire une voix off en français, c'est permis. Ici, mes moyens ne me permettent pas de pouvoir prendre ce temps. Merci de m'aider sur Patreon/Tipeee; peut-être un jour je pourrai embaucher une équipe comme le fait Kurzgesagt. :