"Adunni Dares to Dream" My Illustration Process

“Adunni Dares to Dream” is a book about a young girl who grew up poor in the village in a time when expectations were much different for girls than for boys. Girls were (and in many places still are) expected to help in the home or on the farm and hope to become a mother and homemaker someday. They simply were not a priority when it came to formal education. It was rare for girls to develop a determination to break those gender barriers, even more so for a girl in a poor family. This is what makes Adunni’s journey extra inspiring.

This is my first time illustrating a book for this age range so, naturally, I assumed the book would have to be colorful, clear/clean/crisp, and easy for a child to digest what’s going on.

In hindsight, I may have been wrong but that was the summary of my strategy.

I harked back to my college days when I was in charge of the art department in one of our student fellowships. We used to make a lot of posters using cardboard cutouts. I’d make a sketch of the illustration and then figure out what colors of cardboard we would use. We’d cut the cardboards accordingly and paste them together to make a collage drawing.

Using Adobe Illustrator to digitally make the basic shapes really brings back those memories of the cardboard days. Each illustration was to look as if it was made out of cardboard cutouts but I couldn’t resist adding a little bit of realism (a shadow here, a gradient there, and a bevel here) which I believe gives it a unique look even if that strict cardboard look is compromised (meh...maybe on my next book).

Again, the idea was to use simple shapes with fine gradient colors and a hint of caricature here and there. I hoped the real kicker would be the use of patterns. 

Nigerian attire is very rich with patterns and instead of highly detailed backgrounds, I use patterns in the book. Some of the patterns in the attires are based on real cloth patterns. If you look at the photo of young adult Adunni, you will see that the pattern on her dress was applied to the illustration of Adunni.

I hope this approach blends well with the touching story Taiwo wrote and the decision to include some of the original Ondo language, all coming together to make a compelling read.

Overall it’s been an eye-opening collaborative experience all the way. And we are proud to announce the birth of this book which is our first-born baby as it were. Like a real baby, it takes a village to raise it and this book has been no exception.

We hope you love it and it grows into the phenomenon that the person that inspired it truly is. We’ve seen that phenomenal inspiration in action and we hope you do to.

"Adunni Dares To Dream" is available via AdunnisDream.com