My name is Uzo Njoku, and I am a fourth-year studio art major at the University of Virginia. When I first started painting, I would paint just to decorate my house, and I would post it on Facebook.

And people started giving me feedback about how they loved it, and I decided that this might be a course I wanted to pursue further, and so I changed my major to studio art. I am trying to create an experience based on my identity.

I am Nigerian. That's my culture. But then I also was raised in America, so it's kind of like a blurred line. I've always knew that I wanted to make a coloring book because that was kind of what interested me in colors and art when I was younger. '

And I felt that women of color were not as represented as much in a coloring books. So I said, I can do this, and I can try to capture as many different aspects of femininity as I can in this book.

I actually created it in a month because I wasn't sleeping. I was working on this coloring book every single day. I don't like waiting. I learn by experience. And I expected to sell only 50.

The first orders of books were, like, 1,200 Like, [INAUDIBLE] company, they were able to print the many books I needed. More international people started following my Instagram, and I had orders as far as New Zealand.

If I went through a publishing company, they might have turned me away. If you don't do things yourself, you're going to find yourself waiting a long time, you know, doubting yourself.

You know yourself. You know what you want to do.Go for it.

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