For those who don't know who Piet Mondrian is..., basically he was a great painter of straight lines with palette/textures inside of the lines/boxes.


Correct me if this can be done in krita, but I can't seem to figure out a setting. Doing these style paintings is easier done in photoshop, because photoshop has keyboard modifiers for this with the brush tool.

Small Usability Differences:
============================

1. Horizontal and Vertical Brushing.
In PS CS6 holding left shift + left mouse drag with a brush paints along a horizontal line axis.
In PS CS6 holding right shift + left mouse drag with a brush paints along a vertical line axis.
In earlier versions of PS the modifiers might be a bit different, but similarly still a keyboard modifier.
Is there a hotkey that allows this behavior in krita? As it is, Shift + left mouse drag scales the brush size.

2. Shift paint bucket modifier (extra usability candy on top of the axis brushing)
In GIMP, while using the paint bucket tool, holding shift temporarily changes the affected area from 'Fill whole selection' to 'Fill similar colors' and vise-versa.
These are 2 RadioButtons in GIMP, but in krita only a 'Fill entire selection' checkbox is available and shift + click isn't used.

1. I believe V is the key for straight lines, and then you hold shift to make it snap in 45 degree angles. So it's v-shift (not shift-v, the order matters)

2. not that I know of, sorry

hope that helps!

Uhm, I'd just use the rectangle tool for this? Preferably on a vector layer?

The point of Mondrian's paintings is that they are abstractions of figures, so I would prefer using the vector tool for this so I could adjust the squares to fit the more figurative representation. This is not Pollock, where you just do whatever with a lot of motion.

ramskulls wrote:1. I believe V is the key for straight lines, and then you hold shift to make it snap in 45 degree angles. So it's v-shift (not shift-v, the order matters)

2. not that I know of, sorry

hope that helps!

1. Thanks! OK, that temporarily sets the line tool as primary function. Well, since krita's line tool uses the brush settings, this is very close, and will work, but doesn't quite feel the same as brushing and isn't quite nearly as quick for workflow(Ex: when doing hatching, and rotating the canvas). Photoshop's line tool is just a basic line tool, no brush stuff. It seems I have to hold down v(which switches to the line tool), then click to start a line, then hold shift for the angles functionality(feels a bit odd). This will work for me, but Still implementing a couple axis brush modifiers would help with workflow of certain types of drawings a bit and would be 1 key less to press.

2. Guess I could make a wishbug for this.

TheraHedwig wrote:Uhm, I'd just use the rectangle tool for this? Preferably on a vector layer?

The point of Mondrian's paintings is that they are abstractions of figures, so I would prefer using the vector tool for this so I could adjust the squares to fit the more figurative representation. This is not Pollock, where you just do whatever with a lot of motion.

ramskulls version is close enough for what I do in a PS workflow, and canvas rotation is better in krita.
Sometimes I've brushed up and down with a lot of motion in PS, but usually only when I'm using a special scatter brush or something of the like.
I see the benefit of having this functionality in the brush tool is that the brush tool draws in real time movement, and sometimes accuracy of intersections isn't a priority, such as in hatching/hatch shading.

I don't exactly stick to the rules of neoplasticism always, and swerving inbetween toggling the modifier in PS makes it intuitive and quick to connect lines. If I was making a simple GUI mockup or something, then yes the rectangle tool would be a better choice.

I've managed to add this functionality to moving my frames/windows in wxPython along axis with a modifier key, so the logic would be pretty close when drawing, I guess this would be a matter of someone spending the time to code it into C++. Not a big issue but would be a 'nice to have' for usability. Whenever I get a usable python build, you'll see a bit more prototypes and stuff from this end.

Thanks both of you for your input and ideas.

@ramskulls
Looks like this was asked of here also, but coming from GIMP. Posts details other slight differences in workflow.
Reference: viewtopic.php?t=124626

Oh I remember that thread!! I think I must've misunderstood what they meant, but yes I don't think there's a way to hold shift and create a line from last point.

It's possible with selections though! Iirc, it was added a while back by dmitry: https://phabricator.kde.org/R37:e43ebb6 ... 7445e6f9a9

So maybe it's already implemented and I don't know about it. If not, this at least means that it might be possible!

ramskulls wrote:Oh I remember that thread!! I think I must've misunderstood what they meant, but yes I don't think there's a way to hold shift and create a line from last point.

It's possible with selections though! Iirc, it was added a while back by dmitry: https://phabricator.kde.org/R37:e43ebb6 ... 7445e6f9a9

So maybe it's already implemented and I don't know about it. If not, this at least means that it might be possible!

There are similarities, the PS implementation just deals strickly with horizontal and vertical axis(hence mondrian/neoplasticism), and the GIMP implementation is closer to what you explained to do in krita but without the last point tracking and uses different hotkeys. So yeah, programmatically it should have a reference/pointer to the last click position and a optional modifier if 'from last click down/up' would be if desired. I'm proposing a PS-like implementation, but with a gimp-ish optional point tracking(for anything non-mondrian/neoplasticism) would be a pretty smooth desired operation. Of course, the optional point tracking operation would draw a "line", not a swerve which would just be a continuous fluid motion of the mouse. PS doesn't do 'last point tracking'. Not to be confused with how most CAD systems do "poly-line". Everything should be doable with the brush tool, not the line tool.