So, typically, to get a black and white line art usable for coloring, you can set the blending mode of the line art layer to Multiply. There’s several methods of doing so, each with varying qualities. You wouldn’t really want it to either, how else would you make convincing highlights? So what we first need to do to color in our drawing is prepare our line art. This is because the white isn’t transparent. Put the new layer underneath the layer containing the line art (drag and drop or use the up/down arrows for that), and draw on it. Usually when you see the word ‘’Alpha’’ in a graphics program, just think of it as affecting the transparency. Programmers talk about transparency as ‘’Alpha’’, which is because the ‘a’ symbol is used to present transparency in the algorithms for painting one color on top of another. Other things that a layer stack can do are blending the colors of different layers differently with blending modes, using a filter in the layer stack, or using a mask that allows you to make parts transparent. The layer docker is a way for you to control the drawing order of multiple images, so for example, you can have your line art drawn later than your colors, meaning that the lines will be drawn over the colors, making it easier to make it neat! So like the traditional artist, the computer will first draw the images that are behind everything, and layer the subject and foreground on top of it. This is referred to as the “drawing order”. Switch the commands around, and you will not see the yellow circle at all: it was drawn before the red circle and thus ‘behind’ it. In programming, if you tell a computer to draw a red circle, and then afterwards tell it to draw a smaller yellow circle, you will see the small yellow circle overlap the red circle. Or to first draw a line art and then color it in. In traditional art, it is not uncommon to first draw the full background before drawing the subject. The layer stack is pretty awesome, and it’s one of those features that make digital art super-convenient. To fill line art comfortably, it’s best to take advantage of the layerstack. This tutorial is adapted from this tutorial by the original author.

Digital art tutorials krita