Davorenia covers digital illustration from the inside out — tools, process decisions, visual reasoning, and the parts nobody talks about. No performance, just honest writing about making images with software.
A look at the real obstacles beginners hit when starting digital illustration — and what those early failures actually reveal about the learning process.
Color is where many digital illustrators stall after the basics. These are the specific errors that keep work looking flat — and what changes them.
Trying to develop a personal style too early is one of the most common reasons digital illustrators plateau. The pattern is recognizable and fixable.
Articles here get into the actual process of making an illustration — not the tidy version you see in a timelapse, but the 3-hour middle where nothing reads correctly and you are deciding whether to redo the linework or push through with color.
Expect specific decisions: why a particular layer order, when to use clipping masks versus transparency, how the approach shifts depending on canvas size. These pieces are written for people already drawing, not for beginners looking for a starting point.
Tool coverage focuses on what is actually useful after 6 months of daily use — not first impressions. Pieces compare brushes across apps, look at how Procreate and Clip Studio handle the same task differently, and occasionally pull apart a lesser-known feature that changes how you work.
No affiliate links, no sponsored mentions. If something gets recommended it is because someone here spent real time with it.
Some articles step back from the practical and look at visual reasoning — how composition decisions come from thinking about weight and movement, why certain color relationships feel stable or tense, what separates a drawing that communicates from one that just describes.
These pieces are slower reads. They are worth it if you want to understand why something works rather than just reproduce it.
There is no pressure to catch up. Older articles hold up on their own — nothing here assumes you read something else first unless it says so directly.
Why some palettes feel grounded and others just look busy — examined through specific examples.
4-part seriesOne illustration prompt, both apps, honest comparison of how the tools shape the result.
3-part seriesWhen clean lines help, when they hurt, and what happens in the 20 pixels around an edge that matters most.
ongoingFlat illustration is not anti-light — this series looks at how to use lighting logic without abandoning simplicity.
2-part series
Most writing about digital illustration lives in one of two places — beginner tutorials that cover the same 5 steps, or technical breakdowns aimed at concept artists in studios. Davorenia sits between those 2 poles and writes for the person who already knows how to draw but is still figuring out how to think about image-making on a screen.
That is a specific reader. Someone who has been drawing digitally for 2 or 3 years, is past the basics, and wants to understand why certain approaches work rather than just copy them.
The site does not try to be comprehensive. It covers what the author finds genuinely interesting and has something honest to say about. That makes the scope narrower than most resources — and more useful for the right person.
Twice a month, after each new article goes up, a short email goes out. It is not a digest — it is 3 or 4 sentences on what the piece is about and one observation from the writing process that did not fit into the article.
Around 400 people read it. No tracking pixels, no click analysis, no sales sequences. It is a plain email that arrives, gets read, and that is the whole deal.
Has been drawing digitally for 9 years, primarily in Procreate and Clip Studio. Writes about process because most of what she wanted to read did not exist. Contact at help@davorenia.com