I noticed it's not possible to have build-up on while the masked brush function is used. Is this true?

The reason I ask, is I have been playing with the nightly builds making watercolor brushes with the new subtract mode detailed in a previous post. But I cant get a realistic stroke, because the strokes wont overlap eachother. Wherever the brush overlaps, the subtratced masked brush wont receive pigment. So it has sort of unnatural feel where you can remove pigment from areas you've painted, but can't add more.

Is there another way to make a brush capable of going over previous strokes while still having a subtract mode masked brush?

No, it does not, it is a technical limitation. However, you can use Flow in wash mode and it will function exactly as opacity. The only real benefit to build-up mode is that the blending mode of the brush gets added per dab.

https://docs.krita.org/Masked_Brush
https://docs.krita.org/Opacity_%26_Flow

So if I'm to understand, if you use the subtract mode, there's no way to build up pigment on the same stroke, as the subtract mask will still be there? Ideally, you could make a mark with the masked brush subtracting from that stroke, and then if you stroked back over that mark, not have the mask still there blocking pigment? This is not technically possible?

Here's an illustration of what I mean, where I made a stroke down, and then stroked back and forth over it, but the subtract masked brush portion can't receive pigment.



Thanks for the help.

The solution is simple: on the brush mask, decrease the opacity, but leave flow at 1.0 and disable pressure for it. That's because when mask's flow is lowered, it will get the wiping effect. So for watercolor, keep mask's flow always at 1.0.

Thanks, that was helpful. I'll play with it more.