I've heard nothing but good things about Krita, so I downloaded it (ver 2.9.3) to give it a shot.

Every single time I create a new document, just a plain white one, all I'm given is the checkerboard pattern in the canvas area. When I draw, nothing is shown where the canvas should be, it only displays in the small thumbnail in the 'Layers' section. It does come into view, however, when I click the transform tool. I keep trying to diddle around with it to no avail.

That is very strange. If you can upload a copy of the file it would be helpful. As for the checkerboard pattern you can change that by going to 'image'>'image background color and transparency' and moving the bottom slider to a solid black, then changing the color the whatever you wish. You can also make a new layer underneath your current layer

If that doesnt solve your problem, because I'm not sure what could be causing your invisible problem, try turning opengl on/off

If not try one of the newer builds which can be found here: http://files.kde.org/krita/windows/

Hope it helps!

Try to disable opengl; if that makes a difference, update your display drivers, especially if you're using Intel. I haven't heard of people only seeing the checks, but I have heard of people getting only a black or a white screen with nothing showing up. That's not a bug in Krita: it's a bug in Intel's opengl drivers.

Here's my screen after I create a new blank canvas.

http://postimg.org/image/ho64tmvn5/

Did you try to disable opengl and if that worked, update your display drivers? Which graphics card do you have?

Disabling opengl seemed to work perfectly. Thank you guys so much!

In that case I still want to know which graphics card you have, and if it's an intel, whether updating the driver made opengl work again