The Krita Dev Wiki page on building the Windows version of Krita says to use Visual Studio for Desktops. Does anyone know if the free VS Express version would work, as well?

Building Krita on Windows is _complicated_. It really is. The easy way is using the kde on windows emerge project. Next, use Visual Studio Express 2010 -- that's the last version supported by Qt 4.8. If you want to use 2012 or later, well, there's a world of hurt open to you.

I've done it, I'm doing it, but I'm not recommending it.

Okay, thanks for the info. Seems like the Path of Less Pain is to get a distro of Linux installed and build on that.