[zamadatix]

Krita kind of leads the pack in the "FOSS image editing development fund" category with 17k/month. It's not the same primary use case but there is enough overlap in what it can do that I'd say GIMP is neither in the lead enough or differentiated enough to garner significant support easily.

[shmerl]

Krita is indeed pretty popular for artists at least and yeah, there is an overlap. But still, Blender seems to have way more massive backing in general.