Colour Variance

Color Variance is a Krita docker plugin that automatically shifts your 

foreground colour while you paint — creating the kind of subtle, organic 

variation that makes digital brushwork feel alive.

No more perfectly uniform strokes. Each mark carries its own slight hue, 

saturation, and value — just like traditional media.

─── TWO MODES ───

Per Stroke — Each new stroke gets a slightly different colour, picked 

randomly within your chosen variance range. Simple and predictable.

Continuous — While you hold the brush down, the colour drifts organically 

toward a new target, then picks another, then another. The result is 

smooth, uneven colour shifts mid-stroke — impossible to replicate manually.

─── CONTROLS ───

- Hue ± / Saturation ± / Value ± — how far colours can wander from your 

  locked base colour

- Smoothness — how fast the colour drifts (slow = dreamy, high = snappy)

- Patch interval min/max — how often a new target colour is chosen, 

  picked randomly each time for irregular, natural-feeling patches

- Lock current colour as base — sets your starting point

─── INSTALLATION ───

1. Go to Settings > Manage Resources > Open Resource Folder in Krita

2. Navigate to the pykrita/ folder

3. Copy the color_variance/ folder AND color_variance.desktop into pykrita/

4. Restart Krita

5. Enable via Settings > Dockers > Color Variance

Requires Krita 5.2 or newer. Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

A full README is included in the zip.

─── KNOWN LIMITATION: CONTINUOUS MODE + LOW OPACITY ───

Due to how Krita's opacity model works, continuous mode has one caveat: 

when a stroke break happens to apply a new colour, the new segment 

compounds opacity on top of the previous one. At 55% brush opacity, any 

overlap becomes roughly 80%, creating a slightly darker blob at the 

break point.

This is a fundamental Krita limitation — there is no way to change the 

active stroke colour mid-stroke without starting a new segment.

The practical solutions:

- Use Per Stroke mode for low-opacity work — colour shifts cleanly 

  between strokes with zero compounding. Works perfectly at any opacity.

- Use Continuous mode at 100% brush opacity — no compounding, no blobs. 

  Control transparency via layer opacity instead of brush opacity.

The plugin includes a warning label in the UI as a reminder.

TOOL COMPATIBILITY

The plugin has been tested with standard round brushes and most 

default Krita brush presets. Some specialised brush engines may 

behave differently with the stroke-break system.

If the plugin doesn't work correctly with a specific brush or tool, 

feel free to leave a comment below with the brush name — I'll look 

into it and update the plugin where possible.