Loads of Brushpacks for Krita! + Exploring Krita's Brush Engines

Krita has one of the most powerful and flexible brush systems of all the different digital art software on PC.

It's seriously impressive when you dig into it.

So naturally, some artists have made some really cool brush packs for Krita

First I'll show you 30 different Brush packs made by Krita artists - and then, for those of you who are still thirsty for more brushes, I'll explain how the built-in Krita brush engines work.

If you learn how to use the brush engines, you'll never need to download a brush again!

Brushes by David Revoy

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Take a look at David's amazing comic made with Krita‍

David Revoy is such a prominent name when it comes to Krita, that he has earned his own section in this article!

You can't talk about Krita and it's brushes without mentioning David Revoy, and how much he's contributed to Krita.

1. Krita 4 Extras

This is the latest, huge brush pack that David has released.

In the brush download post itself he mentions how he could have put this brush pack behind a paywall but didn't, as he truly believes in creating things for people for free, just like his comic.

This brush pack is huge - brushes for sketching, painting, and what he calls "hardpainting" which is more rough textured brushes, that aim to replicate the feel of canvas or the feel of paint on particular surfaces.

There are also some bonus brushes, such as a pixel art brush, and a dashed line brush.

2. Minimalist black and white kit

A brush pack that David Revoy published on DeviantArt in 2014.

Definitely worth installing and trying it out - some of these I really like the feeling of!

The set includes some digital (rounded, flat, angular) brushes, expressive and textured brushes, blend/stamp tools, hard textures and chalks, and some basic tools with added adjustments.

3. Krita V4 brushpack

Published by David only a few months earlier than the minimalist black and white kit, this set comes with some great texture brushes and airbrushes.

It's worth giving them a go if this preview peaks your interest.

4. Charcoal pencils

A small charcoal pencil brush set.

Pretty straight forward but very, very handy for sketching, shading, and adding texture.

5. Duo bundle

Another simple one!

David has mentioned that he usually tweaks and adjusts almost all of his brushes every few months, but these two brushes have stayed exactly the same and survived through his ever-changing workflow.

There must be something special to them.

6. Mixed brush bundle

You will notice this brush bundle mentioned any time David's Krita brushes come up.

People don't realise that it's now included by default in Krita 4.0 - which is why I didn't include a link!

So make sure you try out all of the brushes included in Krita 4.0

7. Krita V8.2 brushpack

This one's just for people using an old version of Krita - if your version is earlier than 4.0, try it out!

This is one of the most popular brush sets by David out there, but it was integrated into Krita 4.0 as the Mixed brush bundle above.

This version of the set is not maintained anymore, and doesn't work as intended after Krita 4.2

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Basic Digital Painting Brush Packs

These brush sets are great basic brush packs, containing the tools you'll need to get started.

8. Alicane's small minimalistic brush pack

Most of the brushes Alicane has included in this pack are variations of David Revoy's default brushes in Krita.

I think it's a nifty brush set to try out, if you don't want to go through tinkering with David's brushes yourself.

9. Pyteo's concept art & illustration brush pack

Pyteo's brush pack is one of my absolute favourites, from all the brush packs I have linked.

There are a lot of solid brushes in this pack, covering a wide spectrum of a digital artist's needs.

You can tell that this brush set was well planned and put together - Pyteo has paid attention to the details, starting from default brush sizes he's set, to the very crisp and pleasant looking icons.

The inclusion of perspective and grid brushes is a welcome surprise too - they are a useful and simple tool, and reduces the need of a third party tool to help with perspective drawing.

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Sketching and Inking Brush Packs

A small selection of brush packs for sketching, inking and comic work - many of the variety brush sets further down this article include inking and sketching brushes too.

10. Wolthera's Inking pack

18 great Ink brushes, including some for calligraphy!

11. Jarry H. Line brush set

A small, nifty set of 6 inking brushes by the wonderful artist Jarry H!

12. Ezsaeger's Krita comics and cartooning bundle

A very solid set of brushes if you're into sketching, lineart and making comics.

This set also includes brushes that work great for comic text writing, if you don't want to use fonts.

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Watercolor Brush Sets

Some brush sets for Krita artists who want to achieve a watercolor aesthetic.

Just like the inking brushes, there are more watercolor brushes included in the variety brush sets further down the article.

13. Jackpack Realwater

A small set of basic watercolor brushes - really good for someone who's just getting into digital watercolor!

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14. Pesi brush set

This is a very cool watercolor brush set - all of the brushes are blending brushes, so instead of immediately painting in watercolor, you use these on existing brush strokes to add a watercolor effect.

Pesi's original watercolor brush post is on Krita-Artists.org, a useful forum if you're trying to learn Krita.

15. Vasco Alexander's Watercolor set

A nifty watercolor brush collection - it can be a bit of a hassle to install since it's hosted on GitHub, but all the instructions are provided.

Here's Vasco's website if you want to check his art out.

Variety brush sets

The best thing about these variety brush sets is the ability to play around and explore all of the tools, and find the brushes that appeal most to you.

If you're a beginner artist, learning the fundamentals and experimenting, I recommend checking out these variety brush sets so you can mess around with the different tools.

16. Hushhoil's gigantic brush set

This absolutely massive brush set gives you 9 brush bundles for 280 brushes total!

It includes some basic digital painting brushes, brush tips, concept brushes, patterns and paintbrushes, brushes for inking and sketching, and more.

17. Vasco Basque's modular brush set

Not as huge as Hushhoil's gigantic bundle, but still big - around 120 brushes split into bundles for your convenience.

Some standard digital brushes, inking and sketching brushes, textures, blending and blurring brushes and even some presets for foliage!

18. Raghavendra Kamath's variety brush pack

You will find this brush bundle recommend often - and it's for a good reason.

This is a very nice bundle of 30 brushes that you can see in the below image.

19. Radian1's variety brush set

A great set of more than 60 brushes!

What's unique about this set is that it has few clone brushes that are fun to play around with, and some more crazy blending brushes too.

20. GDQuest's free brush set

Another set hosted on GitHub, which might make installing a bit of a hassle, but it's worth it in the end.

GDQuest also offers a paid version of this brush set (9.95$ for hobby edition, 19.95$ for Pro), that comes with additional goodies like PDFs and video tutorials.

21. Rakkuri's wide variety brush set

They have put so much work into sharing this bundle! Not only have they made a pdf of short explanations and uses for all the brushes, but they've also made a short and sweet video of how the brushes work!

22. Jackpack's brush set

Quite a popular set amongst many artists - a neat collection of painting, sketching, inking, watercolour and VFX brushes!

23. Art Design Studio's custom brushpack ($5)

Yet another big collection of some very interesting brushes!

They've also created a video showcasing all the brushes in the pack

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Texture, pattern and VFX brush sets

These brush sets are really useful for painting very specific, otherwise difficult, things.

24. Jshincreative's Floral / smudge brush set

Some very fun brushes that, despite being so specific, you'll find you can use them in many different ways.

They have also created another floral brush set

25. iForce's Environment brush set

Around 140 brushes in a bundle centered around painting environments! 

I recommend trying this bundle out if you struggle with painting environments, or if you paint environments a lot and are looking for some tricks.

If you look at the description, they have also linked some videos in which they put the brushes to use!

26. Dev-moon's hair and smudge set

Interesting little bundle, that would work for specific styles!

27. Quiralta's environment and texture brush set

There is something special about a well thought-out brush bundle, and that comes through in the little details of this set, such as the brush icons.

While it's only a small thing and doesn't affect how the brush works - it just feels high-quality.

Anyways, Quiralta has obviously put in a lot of thought into this - a great brush set to use for creating greenery and adding cool textures to your environments.

Go check Quiralta out on his website or on his Instagram!

28. Jarry H. cloud brush set

2 brushes that are great for painting fluffy clouds, but the creator themselves notes that they are also great for many other purposes!

29. Paolo Puggioni's cloud brush set

If you like cloud brushes and want to explore some more, Paolo Puggioni has a set with a bit more variety!

30. Taleclock's Leaf colouring brush

This brush set has only two brushes in it, but it's here to highlight that you don't need that many brushes to be able to create nice art. 

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Kritas Built-in Brush Engines

While it's always fun to download and try out brushes made by other artists, Krita actually has amazing brush tools built-in.

Watch Widhi's Krita course on Skillshare for free

If you're new to Krita, I recommend this basics course by Widhi Muttaqien on Skillshare - this link will also give you Skillshare Premium free for 1 month!

I wanted to showcase a little bit about the brush engines that are included in Krita, what they can do and how they differ from each other.

Try out playing with the settings of the brush engines and see what you can make on your own - the possibilities are incredible.

Perhaps you'll be able to make brushes even better than the ones you've downloaded!

Krita currently includes 15 brush engines. This is a little bit about each of them and how they work.

Bristle brush engine

If you want your paintings to feel like traditional inks, or oil or acrylic paintings, try out the Krita's bristle brush engine.

The bristle brush engine aims to replicate how a real life brush would work.

In the brush settings, you define the area with "bristles" in it, and the size and rotation settings affect the whole brush tip, not the individual "bristles".

I find it's the default brush is best for an ink aesthetic, but by playing with the brush settings you can make some great oil and acrylic brushes!

‍Settings you can tweak in the bristle brush engine:

• The bristle brush core (Scale, Random offset, Shear, Density, Mouse pressure, Threshold, Connect hairs, Anti-Aliasing, Composite bristles)
• The brushes ink depletion (Opacity, Saturation, Soak Ink, Weighted saturation)

Clone brush engine

The clone brush can be used to achieve some really interesting effects, and can save a lot of painting time if you're clever with it.

It's kind of self explanatory really - this brush engine allows you to pick one specific point on the canvas, and create an exact replica at another point.

When you drag to create a brushstroke, it clones everything along that path.

As a quick tutorial - selecting your brush, you'll see two pointers. Before you use the brush, make sure you've set your brush cursor settings to Brush Outline.

Press Ctrl and set the beginning of the area you want to clone. It's going to lock in place, and now you're free to paint on the canvas - it will replicate the targeted area.

‍Settings you can tweak in the clone brush engine:

• Basic brush settings (Size, Blending modes, Opacity and flow)
• The brushes painting mode (Healing, Source point move, Source point reset before a new stroke, Clone from all visible layers)

Color Smudge brush engine

This brush engine is great for making brushes that allow you to smear and smudge around your colours, so it's perfectly suited to blending and softening edges.

If you reduce the amount of smudging the brush applies, you can also make really great oil brushes with the color smudge engine.

Also, you can make brushes that can poth paint or blend, depending on how hard you press - this engine is really cool.

‍Settings you can tweak in the clone brush engine:

• Basic brush settings (Brush tips, Blending modes, Opacity and Flow, Size, ratio, Spacing, Mirror, Rotation, Scatter, Gradient, Airbrush, Texture)
• Some settings unique to the Color Smudge brush engine (Color Rate, Smudge length) to

Curve brush engine

If you don't have a pressure-sensitive tablet, you could use this brush engine to create a similar look to pressure sensitive linework with just a mouse.

Many of us using Krita do have a pressure sensitive tablet though, and this brush engine is a fun tool that you can use for jazzing up your linework, adding interesting textures and effects, etc.

Settings you can tweak in the curve brush engine:

• Line width, History size (distance for the curve lines), Curves opacity, Paint connection line, Smoothing

Deform brush engine

This is a Liquify tool - you can deform your art right on the canvas, pushing and pulling bits of it around.

The deform brush engine is absolutely fantastic for fixing mistakes on a drawing, such as making something bigger or smaller, or moving something over a smidge.

Settings you can tweak in the deform brush engine:

• Basic options (Brush tips, Blending modes, Opacity and Flow, Size, Rotation, Airbrush)
• Deform specific (Move, Grow, Shrink, Swirl countrerclockwise, Swirl clockwise, Lens zoom in, Lens zoom out, Color deformation)

Filter brush engine

If you are familiar with photoshop, the filter brush engine is like dodge, burn, blur, sharpen and a whole bunch of other filters, all under one brush engine.

You can combine different filters for all kinds of brush effects - this engine is extremely powerful, but it takes a lot of practice to use these effects properly in a piece of art

Settings you can tweak in the filter brush engine: 

• Basic options (Brush tips, Blending modes, Opacity and flow, Size, Mirror, Rotation)
• A host of filters (Dodge, Burn, Blur, Sharpen, Noise, Gradient maps, etc)

Grid brush engine

The grid brush engine lets you draw shapes set to a grid. These brushes are great for making retro textures and halftone effects.

Settings you can tweak in the grid brush engine:

• Options (Brush size, particle type, blending modes, opacity and flow, color options)

Hatching brush engine

This engine is hatching made easy!

But it's so much more than that - if you play around with the engine enough, you can make brushes with really cool and unique textures.

Settings you can tweak in the Hatching brush engine:

• Brush tip
• Hatching preferences (Anti-aliased lines, Subpixel precision, Color background)
• Main hatching options (Angle, separation, Thickness, Origin X and Origin Y, Moire pattern)

Particle brush engine

Another brush engine that lets you add some cool aesthetics to your line art, or add textures and effects to your work.

Settings you can tweak in the Particle brush engine:

• Brush size (Particles, Opacity weight, Distance X Scale, Distance Y Scale, Gravity, Iterations)
• ‍Blending modes, Opacity and Flow, Airbrush

Pixel brush engine

Despite the name, the pixel brush engine is what most digital artists are likely to use for their main brushes.

It can certainly be used for pixel art brushes, and it works really well for that, like so:

But the main brush I use to make art in Krita is a simple round brush, made with the pixel brush engine:

One of the main reasons why this engine is the first choice for artists, is because of how much customization is available.

Settings you can tweak in the Pixel brush engine:

• Brush tips, Blending modes, Opacity and Flow, Size, Ratio, Spacing, Mirror, Softness, Sharpness, Rotation, Scatter, Source, Mix, Airbrush, Texture, Masked brush
• Settings specific to the Pixel brush - Darken, Hue, Saturation and Value

Quick brush engine

This is a purposely simplistic brush engine with very limited adjustment options, for creating basic brushes like big filling brushes that work quickly.

Settings you can tweak in the Quick brush engine:

• ‍Blending modes, spacing, size

Shape brush engine

This engine is straightforward and fun to play with - it turns your lines into filled shapes.

With a lot of practice, you can use this engine to really speed up your painting process, especially the start of paintings, as you can basically draw and paint at the same time.

It does take practice though!

Settings you can tweak in the Shape brush engine:

• Experiment option (Speed, Smooth, Displace, Winding fill, Hard edge)
• Blending modes

Sketch brush engine

This engine makes messy brushes that force a very 'sketched' feeling on your brush strokes.

Used in a specific way, it can create a really appealing aesthetic to drawings.

Settings you can tweak in the Sketch brush engine:

• Brush tips, Blending modes, Opacity and flow, Size, Ratio, Line width, Offset scale, Density, Rotation, Airbrush

Spray brush engine

This one is very straightforward - the spray brush engine allows you to make brushes that spray particles around.

Used correctly it creates nice effects that would be really hard to paint by hand with a normal brush.

Settings you can tweak in the Spray brush engine:

• Spray area, Spray shape, Brush tips, Opacity and flow, Size, Blending modes, Shape dynamics, Color options, Rotation, Airbrush

Tangent Normal brush engine

This brush engine is designed for painting normal maps.

If you don't know what normal maps are, you probably shouldn't bother learning how to use the tangent normal brush engine! It's only going to be useful for people working with 3D modelling.

If you are familiar with normal maps already, then you'll be pleased to know that this brush engine basically lets you paint surface/plane information, instead of hue, value and saturation like a standard brush. Very cool!

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That's a wrap!

There you have it, a veritable treasure hoard of downloadable brushes for Krita, and even some explanation of how to use Krita's built-in brush engines.

For those who still aren't satiated, Krita also supports Photoshop brushes!

The only catch is that Krita imports the Photoshop brush files just as brush tips without the other settings, so for most Photoshop brushes you will need to adjust the brush settings to make them work properly.

In my opinion, learning how the Krita brush engines work is the smartest thing to do.

Watch Widhi's Krita course on Skillshare for free

In case you missed it earlier, if you're new to Krita I recommend this basics course by Widhi Muttaqien on Skillshare - this link will also give you Skillshare Premium free for 1 month!

If you know how to use the Krita brush engines, the next time you need a brush for a specific purpose you can just make one in a couple of minutes, instead of having to scour the internet hoping someone else made it already!

Once you figure out how to use one brush engine, the rest will come easily to you, and then you'll be able to tweak brushes and make crazy, wacky new ones with ease - and never have to pay for a brush pack again!