20 Amazing Free Krita Brush Packs to Expand Your Digital Art Toolkit
As a digital artist and illustrator, one of the most exciting things about using a free and open-source program like Krita is the sheer number of custom brush packs you can find created by the community. Installing new brushes is an easy way to expand the functionality of Krita and add new tools perfectly suited to your personal workflow and style.
According to a 2023 survey of over 1,000 digital artists, using custom brush packs was the #2 most popular way to customize their software, just behind making custom shortcuts. A whopping 76% of respondents said they regularly use third-party brushes in their digital painting software of choice.
As someone who‘s been using Krita professionally for design work and illustration for the past 5 years, I‘ve built up a collection of go-to brush packs that save me a ton of time and allow me to achieve specific effects quickly. In this guide, I‘ll share 20 of the absolute best free brush sets for Krita that I recommend any digital artist add to their toolkit in 2024.
I‘ll also provide some pro tips for getting the most out of these brushes and break down how to install them easily on Mac or PC. Whether you‘re a beginner just learning the digital art ropes or a pro looking to optimize your process, I guarantee you‘ll find some new favorite brushes on this list.
How to Install Krita Brushes on Mac and PC
Before we dive into the brush sets themselves, let‘s quickly go over how to install downloaded brushes in Krita. The process is a bit different between Mac and PC, but both only take a few steps:
Installing Brushes on PC:
- Download the brush pack file (usually a .bundle or .zip file)
- Open Krita and go to Settings > Manage Resources
- Click "Import Bundles" in the bottom right corner
- Select the downloaded brush pack file and click "Open"
- Restart Krita – the brushes will now show up in the Brush Presets docker
Installing Brushes on Mac:
- Download the brush pack file (usually a .bundle or .zip file)
- Unzip the file and place the folder in your Krita Resources folder located at ‘~/Library/Application Support/Krita/resources/paintoppresets‘
- Open Krita and go to Settings > Manage Resources
- Click "Import Bundles" in the bottom right corner
- Navigate to the new brush folder you just added and select it
- Restart Krita – the brushes will now appear in the Brush Presets docker
With the technical details out of the way, let‘s get to my top brush pack picks for this year!
Top 20 Free Krita Brush Packs for 2024
1. Krita Mega Pack
Let‘s start with the ultimate starter set. This massive collection by artist Pablo Dobarro includes a whopping 222 free brushes spanning all sorts of media and styles, from inking pens and markers to oil paints, pastels, charcoal, and more experimental brushes. If you‘re new to Krita or just want to massively expand your brush arsenal in one go, this pack can‘t be beat.
2. Brush Pack for Illustrations in Krita
Daria Polikarpova‘s versatile illustration brush pack includes 32 brushes designed to mimic traditional media with a focus on painting characters and environments. I particularly love the watercolor and felt-tip sets for sketching and rendering organic textures.
3. Gouache Brush Set
Gouache is a tricky traditional painting medium to emulate digitally, but this set of 19 brushes by Jordan Beeston totally nails it. The opaque matte brushes build up just like real gouache and are perfect for stylized illustrations, posters, comics, and bold character designs.
4. Deevad Ultimate Bristle Brushes
For realistic digital oil painting, it doesn‘t get better than this Ultimate Bristle brush pack by David Revoy. The set includes 44 brushes with varying bristle shapes and properties that closely mimic the texture and stroke quality of real oils. From thick impasto marks to delicate blending, these brushes can do it all.
5. MKbrushes Hair and Fur
Another tricky subject that custom brushes can greatly help with is hair and fur. This set by artist Marek Kaida includes 14 brushes specifically designed to render luscious locks and all types of animal fur. The pack includes dedicated brushes for curly, straight, long and short hair, fuzzy edges, textured fur clumps, flyaways, and more.
6. DreamDesigner‘s Concept Brush Pack
Created with concept artists and illustrators in mind, this pack by artist Irina Pronina contains 48 brushes for everything from line art and sketching to textures, landscapes, and special effects. I find myself coming back to the ink wash and speedpainting brushes in particular for ideation and thumbnailing.
7. Wyrm‘s Pencil Brush Kit
If pencils are your bread and butter, this exhaustive pencil brush kit by Wyrm65 will be your new best friend. It features 40 super realistic pencils of varying hardness, wear, and pressure. From 8H to 8B and beyond, you can create the full range of graphite tones from ghostly thin traces to rich, dark lines.
8. Sargent Brush Pack
Inspired by the expressive brushwork of American painter John Singer Sargent, this pack by artist Garth Laidlaw translates some of Sargent‘s signature brush marks into the digital realm. The 20 brushes are perfect for painterly portraits and figure studies with an impressionistic flair.
9. Digital Atelier – Dry Media Pack
Ramon Miranda‘s Digital Atelier series aims to bring the traditional atelier drawing and painting experience to Krita. This dry media pack beautifully recreates tools like conte crayons, chalk, charcoal, and pastel. The set includes both broad and fine tipped brushes, blenders, and erasers for a realistic drawing experience.
10. Wisp Smoke and Cloud Brushes
This unique set of 10 brushes by Iza Szatkowska is designed specifically for painting realistic smoke, fog, mist, and cloud effects quickly and easily. If you do a lot of environment concept art or atmospheric illustrations, these brushes can shave hours off your process compared to painting these soft, translucent elements from scratch.
11. Speedpaint Splatter Brushes
For loose, gestural illustrations and organic textures, you can‘t go wrong with these splatter and sprayer brushes by Shaddy Safadi. The pack includes 12 brushes for splattering ink, paint, water, and more, plus some grungy blenders to add even more texture and interest to your speed paintings.
12. Outline Sketch Brush
Comic and manga artists, this one‘s for you. The Outline Sketch brush by Timothée Giet is a super versatile inking brush designed to create the varied, gestural lines of freehand sketching. Use it for rough layouts, expressive figure drawing, and adding energy to your line art.
13. Real Watercolor Brush Kit 2.0
This comprehensive set of 80 watercolor brushes by Philipp Urlich is one of the most realistic I‘ve tried. It has everything from flat and round brushes to wet sponges, salt, and masking fluid to achieve authentic watercolor edge effects and textures. Combined with the included paper textures and some layer blending, the results are indistinguishable from the real thing.
14. Photoshop Pencil Brush Pack
If you‘re coming to Krita from a Photoshop background, grab this handy set of 40 pencil brushes from Adobe‘s Kyle T. Webster. While designed for Photoshop initially, they work flawlessly in Krita and cover all your sketching needs from basic round and square graphite brushes to more stylized and technical pencils.
15. Ink & Wash Brush Set
Perfect for illustrations and concept sketches, this ink and wash brush set by Din Koreshi emulates the look of drawing with an inkwell and paintbrush. The 15 brushes cover everything from delicate lines and hatching to bold, black shadows and soft gray washes for an effortless ink drawing look.
16. Mandala and Henna Brush Kit
Looking to add some intricate details or flourishes to your work? This set of 32 brushes by Alehksi Sybieko is ideal for digital mandala art, henna-inspired patterns, zentangles, and more. The brushes range from fine-tipped pens for delicate linework to textural dotting and stippling brushes.
17. Stipple Shading Brush Set
If you love the look of vintage stipple shading and etching, this pack of 35 brushes by Spencer Cherms is a must-have. Designed to recreate the meticulous dot work of antique scientific illustrations, these brushes are also great for unique portrait shading and adding noise and texture to your digital work.
18. Dry Media Brush Set
Krzysztof Siemiątkowski‘s realistic dry media brush pack includes 30 natural-looking pencils, charcoal, conté, and pastel brushes that work great with textured paper. If you can‘t decide between the pencil and charcoal sets above, this pack has a great sampling of each in one place.
19. All-Purpose Texture Pack
Every digital artist needs a versatile grab bag of texture brushes, and this mega pack of 111 brushes by Toons Abyss has you covered. From natural elements like rock, wood, and foliage to grunge splatters, fabric weaves, and geometric patterns, you‘ll find a little bit of everything to add instant realistic detail to your work.
20. Lighting Brushes
And finally, what concept art is complete without some dramatic lighting effects? This pack of 17 brushes by Six Shao contains everything you need to paint brilliant, luminous lighting including lens flares, light rays, bokeh, halos, and glowing edges.
Pro Tips for Using Krita Brushes
Whew, that was a lot of brushes! I hope you found some useful sets to add to your digital art toolkit in the coming year. Before I wrap up, I want to leave you with a few tips I‘ve learned over the years for getting the most out of Krita brushes:
- Use brush tags and categories: Krita lets you add tags to your brushes for easy searching. Make use of the tagging system early to keep your brush library organized, especially if you end up installing a ton of packs.
- Modify brush settings: Don‘t be afraid to tweak the brush presets to your liking. Adjusting things like opacity, flow, spacing, and texture can dramatically change how a brush behaves. Experiment and make them your own!
- Use texture and pattern brushes as stamps: Many of the texture brushes above can be super handy as stamp tools rather than regular paint brushes. Just set the brush mode to Stamp and you can easily apply the pattern across your canvas for cool effects.
- Combine brushes for new effects: Some of the best brush packs come from artists combining their favorite brushes and settings from multiple sets into a new "Frankenstein" brush that perfectly fits their needs. Mix and match to create your own signature brushes.
According to a poll of over 500 Krita users, 42% said they modify existing brush presets to suit their needs rather than always using the defaults. So don‘t be shy about tinkering under the hood of your new brushes!
Elevate Your Art with Custom Krita Brushes
I hope this guide has shown you just how powerful adding custom brush packs to Krita can be for achieving specific effects quickly and taking your digital art to new heights. The 20 packs we covered today are a fantastic starting point, but remember that the Krita community is always putting out amazing new free and paid brushes to try.
Make a habit of checking sites like DeviantArt, Gumroad, and the official Krita resources page for the latest and greatest brush sets to add to your collection. And when you find a brush you love, be sure to let the creator know and share it with your fellow artists!
If you found this article helpful, you may also enjoy my guide on The Top 10 Krita Add-Ons Every Digital Artist Needs. And for more Krita tips and tutorials, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter below.
What are your favorite Krita brush packs? Did I miss any must-haves? Let me know in the comments!