David Revoy
davidrevoy.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
David Revoy is a comic artist behind Pepper&Carrot who writes about digital painting with Krita and Linux, and about open art licensing.
What HN saysHN commenters cite him as an example of a professional artist using open-source tools and permissive licenses, and link his Linux install guides.
55HN people shared it
27linked it in comments
49stories submitted
992story points
3 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Kubuntu Linux 20.04 for digital painting workstation: Reasons and Install guide5 people · 9 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 2Homepage5 people · first shared 2014
- 3Debian KDE: Right Linux distribution for professional digital painting in 20243 people · 318 points · first shared 2024 · 195 comments on HN
- 4Dream Cats NFT: don't buy them3 people · 20 points · first shared 2021 · 6 comments on HN
- 5Review: Purism Librem13 laptop2 people · 203 points · first shared 2018 · 178 comments on HN
- 6How Proprietary Social-Media Is Shaping the Future of Pepper and Carrot2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 7How to customise a USB numeric keypad under GNU/Linux?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 8Interim Install Guide: KDE Neon for a professional digital painter workstation2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 9A Critique of Cara.app: The 'No AI' Instagram and Artstation Copycat Child2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 10Smart-Coloring, preview of a new GMIC filter2 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Kubuntu Linux 19.10 for a digital painting workstation1 people · 138 points · first shared 2020 · 45 comments on HN
- 12The end of Pepper&Carrot and my next project1 people · 112 points · first shared 2024 · 13 comments on HN
- 13Mozilla right now (Digital Painting)1 people · 49 points · first shared 2025 · 32 comments on HN
- 14New Comic Book: La BD de L'Avent, Le Lombard Publishing1 people · 34 points · first shared 2024 · 12 comments on HN
- 15CMYK in Inkscape could be a game-changer for professional print designers1 people · 17 points · first shared 2025 · 7 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
ximeng · 2020-11-14
The best long term solution to overbearing copyright is to create more content with permissive licenses.
E.g. David Revoy creates art using open source software: https://www.davidrevoy.com/
Just as Microsoft and Apple would no doubt have even more locked down OSes if there wasn’t a fallback of Linux, so the more competition for people’s attention that is not controlled by large corporations, the less bargaining and coercive power they will have.
Youden · 2020-05-23
I'm not an artist myself but I follow David Revoy, who [0] uses Krita and other open-source software extensively for his Pepper & Carrot comic [1]. His blog [0] is full of posts about how he does his work using open-source tools.
There are plenty of fantastic artists who use Krita but I find him interesting because of how dedicated he is to using open-source software for all his work.
[0]: https://www.davidrevoy.com/
[1]: https://www.peppercarrot.com/
bjconlan · 2026-08-06
Besides the actual topic. The portfolio is fantastic! I particularly liked the yin and yang of world hunger. https://www.davidrevoy.com/article43/yin-and-yang-of-world-hunger. I mean not something I want to look at on a wall for too long but it draws on my enjoyment of dark comic book illustrations while also pointing to something topical
upboundspiral · 2026-01-31
One of my favorites is Amphora of Great Intelligence by the artist David Revoy.
https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1090/the-amphora-of-great-intelligen…
https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1092/the-amphora-of-great-intelligen…
red_trumpet · 2024-05-31
David Revoy doesn't recommend Fedora 40 for digital artists any more. The main reasons are regressions in tablet software with Plasma 6, and Krita not being a Wayland app.
[1] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1030/debian-12-kde-plasma-2024-insta…
Kirce · 2024-03-15
The art is from David Revoy https://www.davidrevoy.com he does lots of art for OSS.
pkaye · 2020-06-25
There is a list of supported tablets on the Krita website. I think Wacom and Huion are the most popular. Wacom is mainstream and well supported but more expensive.
https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/list_supported_tablets.html
Also check out David Revoy. He has a great deal of tutorials using Krita.
https://www.davidrevoy.com/categorie3/tutorials-brushes-extras
In terms of displays, I just use a high quality IPS monitor. Some people use tablets with screens because I have no experience with that.
timonovici · 2017-01-15
There's one artist that uses FLOSS to draw and make a living out of it, David Revoy.
He's using Krita as his main painting tool, but:
"Gcolor2 is a colorpicker, Inkscape my favorite vector editor, Gimp for manipulating images and Shutter for taking advanced screenshots."
https://www.davidrevoy.com/article316/ubuntu-16-04-for-my-digital-pain…
I don't see why we shouldn't support the development of both programs. I personally like GIMP better, maybe just because I'm used with the interface, and I don't do paintings, only image manipulations.
rootlocus · 2016-08-29
David Revoy is an extremely talented illustrator and a long time supporter of free & open source tools. He released "Chaos & Evolutions"[1] a few years ago where he shows his workflows in gimp, alchemy and mypaint, he was involved with the making of the movie "Sintel", another open source project made in Blender[2] and his blog is filled with tutorials for the Krita software (photoshop alternative for ilustrations). You can find a lot of his wonderful works on deviantart, but my favorite by far (and I urge everyone to take a look) is the graphic novel "L'heritage en couleur" [3].
[1] http://www.davidrevoy.com/article44/artworks-from-my-dvd-chaos-evoluti…
[2] https://durian.blender.org/
[3] http://deevad.deviantart.com/art/l-heritage-en-couleur-308125572
unhammer · 2015-01-16
Getting a presentation from http://davidrevoy.com/ sounds like a motivating way to start using the program :-)
wollw · 2013-01-11
MyPaint and Krita are actually both great programs for digital painting. David Revoy is an artist who uses both (and also created one of the brush sets for MyPaint) and his work is worth looking at: http://www.davidrevoy.com/2-portfolio.html
He has a number of tutorials available on his site too: http://www.davidrevoy.com/4-tutorials.html
I believe he also uses Gimp with the Gimp Paint Studio presets for some things: http://code.google.com/p/gps-gimp-paint-studio/
dedosk · 2012-06-02
Krita (www.krita.org) is also very great piece of software recently, sometimes called "best-kept secrets among Linux applications". See this blog-post from professional illustrator http://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?article98/krita-2-4-beta-screensho…
627467 · 2026-08-05
> backlash is good
Because pre-AI, slop didnt exist? At least in the past meaningful criticism involved much more than name calling. I guess criticism slop is a natural progression and matches low effort creative slop. 0 moral higher ground
AI slop accusations are tiring, spammy, and most of the time without any evidence to back it up other than prejudice and bad attitude[0]
[0] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1163/authenticity-problem
Gualdrapo · 2025-10-15
And even if you were you could manage to earn a living without using Adobe stuff. Ask David Revoy, for example.
https://www.davidrevoy.com/static2/about-me
jeroenhd · 2023-11-02
According to the evtest screenshots the author added (https://www.davidrevoy.com/data/images/blog/2023/2023-11-01_linux-kern… that may need a rather annoying and unreliable wrapper. The kernel transmits the buttons as BTN_TOOL_RUBBER, as far as I can see.
molticrystal · 2023-11-01
It didn't hurt that the comment section[0] for the blog is powered by the fediverse [1], so Greg KH responded to the post [2] pointing him towards writing that email and tips on doing so along with many other tech savvy individuals. This issue is being seen all over the place.
[0] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article995/how-a-kernel-update-broke-my-sty…
[1] https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy/111336038253784524
[2] https://social.kernel.org/notice/AbN55QfONFCPweYq7E
Springtime · 2023-08-26
An illustrator specifically wrote[1] that this is why they won't be tagging their social media posts with #HumanMade, #NoAI and similar, as it's a signal there's unadulterated training data.
[1] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article977/artificial-inteligence-why-i-ll-…
fishtoaster · 2022-12-29
It's interesting to see this gif used here because it's pretty much the canonical explanation of the term "Yak Shaving"[0]. Technical debt is often a cause of yak shaving, so it's not unreasonable, but it's odd to see such a well-used explainer gif repurposed so.
[0] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article861/yak-shaving
remram · 2022-03-13
This one is way cuter, generating cats: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article591/cat-avatar-generator
southerntofu · 2021-12-19
Blockchain does not ensure provenance. [0]
As a reseller, publishing your PGP signatures on a git repository provides the same level of authenticity: you can't prove where it came from, and you can't silently erase past transactions to the eyes of people who have a copy of the chain/repo.
[0] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article864/dream-cats-nfts-don-t-buy-them
ognarb · 2021-01-11
Disclainer: KDE dev so take my opinion with a pinch of salt :p
The decision by the Ubuntu Studio variants was made by the Ubuntu Studio developers and not by Canonical. The developers are also maintaining Fedora Jam with KDE installed by default too. Unfortunately all the big commercial distros are using GNOME as default DE because RedHat is providing the commercial support for GNOME already and it's easier for them to just make the same choice. So I don't think Ubuntu will switch to KDE anytime soo, even if GNOME developers don't like Ubuntu and make their opinion very public.
For those interested on why artists like Plasma so much, David Revoy made a nice summary: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article783/kubuntu-linux-20-04-for-a-digita…
Pouhiou · 2020-10-27
The sources (krita files) and hi res jpeg files will soon be published online here https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/static6/sources&page=other
All those illustrations are CC-By David Revoy : https://www.davidrevoy.com/article800/mobilizon
pabs3 · 2020-04-19
David Revoy (who created the (awesome) Pepper and Carrot cartoon, which is both freely licensed and the source is released) was recently interviewed on the Libre Lounge podcast (and another one in French). In the Libre Lounge episode they covered this, he essentially uses the Patreon model and when big publishers publish his work they do it under the same Creative Commons license everyone else can and in addition they fund his work using Patreon too, even though they are not obligated to do so. The episode is quite interesting in several ways.
https://www.davidrevoy.com/article771/podcasts-interviews
https://librelounge.org/episodes/36-david-revoy-on-pepper--carrot-and-…
Kyrio · 2019-04-08
Nice to see G'MIC's smart colorize algorithm making its way into core GIMP. The research team worked with David Revoy, the character designer of several Blender open movies (such as Sintel or Spring), so I've heard a lot about it from him. He's written a few blog posts (e.g. [1]) and videos on how to use the Krita and GIMP implementations of the feature.
[1] https://www.davidrevoy.com/article324/smart-coloring-preview-of-a-new-…
stamps · 2018-07-03
This review talks about using a Wacom tablet with it: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article341/review-purism-librem13-laptop
I find the touch pad to be accurate and usable on Manjaro, but I only use it to move around the terminal, IDE, and VMs.
diggan · 2018-03-22
Yeah, Krita has themes/skins, here is a few: http://www.davidrevoy.com/article124/themes-for-krita-and-kde The top one seems darker. Otherwise you can always edit the `.colors` file of your choosing to be even darker.
phyzix5761 · 2026-06-02
These are my top ones:
Protesilaos: https://protesilaos.com/codelog.xml and https://protesilaos.com/commentary.xml
HN: https://hnrss.org/frontpage
Sacha Chua: https://sachachua.com/blog/feed/index.xml
David Revoy: https://www.davidrevoy.com/feed/rss
Davep: https://blog.davep.org/feeds/all.atom.xml
xkcd: https://xkcd.com/atom.xml
YouTube - Michelle Khare: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCGGZ_POGmIWG1pQXT…
YouTube - TmarTn2: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC36MGPfPwOWafAXau…