ILLUSTRATION | BOOK DESIGN
I illustrated the book “Journey For Justice”, which was written by historian Dawn Bohulano Mabalon with writer Gayle Romasanta. It tells the story of Larry Itliong's lifelong fight for a farmworkers union, and the birth of one of the most significant American social movements of all time, the farmworker's struggle, and its most enduring union, the United Farm Workers. To find out more about this story and the publisher Bridge + Delta, go HERE.
I was fortunate to be asked by my good friends Dawn and Gayle to be a part of this project. This was my first fully illustrated book project that provided me both with many challenges but also immense pride in my community and heritage. I learned so much by both illustrating and designing the book, but more importantly, learned about my own family roots in relationship to this story.
My biggest challenge in this project was how do I make the art fun and accessible to a younger reader while remaining true to the academic and historic tone of the storytelling? The timeline to get this all done was less than I had anticipated so I had to find a way to visually tell the story in a style that I could execute in the time that I had available.
The solution came to me as I began sketching for this project. At first, I planned to take my sketches and turn them into flat, vector-based drawings. But that process would have taken twice as long, and time was of the essence. I began to look at the sketches as not only the foundation for the final artwork, but as the final artwork itself. Using Procreate I was able to mimic an illustrative quality akin to color pencils and pastels. Combining the drawing style with an almost candy-colored palette helped to achieve a look that would resonate with both young and adult readers alike.
We had originally planned a square format book, but due to the amount of text needed for every page, the book expanded to a traditional tall format. Shown here are test color palettes for the story.
I started using a more stylized “cartoony” look for the book, but later changed to a more sketchy realistic style, given the historical tone of writing. Here are some test illustrations for young Larry.
Some early cover designs for the book.
Some page development sketches.
More development sketches Larry. In the historical photos that Dawn provided, Larry was always smoking a cigar. Albeit accurate to his life and personality, it was an element that we had to leave out of the story since it was for kids. Larry was a simple man, proud of his agricultural roots. He wasn’t someone who wore expensive suits or fancy clothes. I tried to bring the raw unfettered quality of his personality into the illustration style of the book.
