morganist
commented
3 months ago I think this is, first of all, a matter of personal preference. However, Papirus has a distinct style that doesn't use lots of colours and gradients. If Krita's icon looked like that, it would probably stand out too much among other icons. The current version is not underwlhelming, it's stylised. Also, I think the use of CMY is a nice touch which will be lost with the proposed design due to the colour palette being much busier.
i just think that the 3 color icon is a bit underwhelming compared to the original gradient. i made these two to showcase how it could be more colorful, i'm no graphic designer though (the purple triangle is not centered on purpose - this way it looks centered with the pencil when displayed on small sizes)