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by Greg Pizzoli

{published 2013, by Disney Hyperion}

I’ve been looking forward to this book for a long time, mostly because that cover is SPECTAZZLING. But also cause I follow Greg Pizzoli on Twitter, where he is clever and quippy and shares things like THE ENDPAPERS. And then this is what the publisher teased us with, so I was pretty much in love with this book right away:

With perfect comic pacing, Greg Pizzoli introduces us to one funny crocodile who has one big fear: swallowing a watermelon seed. What will he do when his greatest fear is realized? Will vines sprout out his ears? Will his skin turn pink? This crocodile has a wild imagination that kids will love.

Yeah. SO INTO THAT. The Watermelon Seed hits stores TOMORROW, May 14th, so you might want to go ahead and get in line. After you meet Greg, of course.

So I’ve also been looking forward to this post for almost as long. I’m thrilled to have Greg Pizzoli in for a visit. Welcome, Greg!

I call him “Kroc”. Sometimes my editor calls him “K-Roc” or “The Krocster”. Boy, does he hate that.My background is in printmaking, and I built a silkscreen shop in my studio, which is how I generate a lot of my work. I think my preference towards limited and deliberate colors comes from the printmaking. It could be laziness, but I’m going to say printmaking.

Basically you make a drawing in black and use that to make a stencil on a screen. Doesn’t matter how you make that drawing – by hand on tracing paper, with construction paper, in Photoshop – whatever you can use to get a drawing in black. Your screen, which is a frame of aluminum with a fine mesh stretched across it, is covered in photographic emulsion, and you expose the screen to light. Wherever the light hits the emulsion, it hardens and becomes water resistant.

BUT if you put your black drawing between the screen and the light source, the emulsion that is blocked by your drawing (which remember, is black, thus very light blocking-y), that emulsion stays soft. And you can wash it out with water. So everything that wasn’t blocked by your drawing is water resistant, and your drawing washes out of the screen, making a water resistant stencil in the shape of your drawing. You make one of those for each layer, or usually, color. WATERMELON was offset printed obviously, but I did a lot of screenprinting textures, etc to make it feel very printy. The spot colors definitely help there, too.

I’ve been teaching screenprinting for about 4 years at The University of the Arts in Philly. It’s where I met Brian Biggs. He took a continuing ed class I was teaching in 2009. He introduced me to my agent. I dedicated a book to him, but it hasn’t come out yet. I still owe him big time. I still teach! I love it.

Humor usually keeps me interested in whatever I’m doing.

I like to work with texture for sure, too. And shapes. Shapes, yeah, shapes are good. I know this is great interview material here. Breaking news, Greg Pizzoli “like shapes”. Today on Buzzfeed, 23 shapes Greg Pizzoli likes most.

Anyway . . . I was really into shapes and texture with THE WATERMELON SEED, and the next book I’m doing with Hyperion (NUMBER ONE SAM, Summer 2014) comes from a similar place. We’re doing spot colors for that one, too. But four this time, which opens up a lot of possibilities in terms of overlapping layers and colors.

Like most people, I like lots of stuff. I never get tired of looking at Eduardo Munoz Bachs posters. He obviously had a lot of fun making his work. A lot of people you’d suspect probably, Sendak, Ed Emberly, Tove Jansson, Charles Schultz, etc.

I’m really lucky to have so many talented buddies in the Philly area, too. I host occasional drink ‘n’ draws at my studio and Zach Ohora, Matt Phelan, Bob Shea, Tim Gough, Amy Ignatow, Brian Biggs, Lee Harper, Gene Baretta, Eric Wight, and several others have come by. It’s a good time. Sometimes we do this thing where we each draw for five minutes and then pass the paper to the right and draw on top of that drawing for five minutes, until we get all the way around the circle or run out of beer. You can imagine just how bad these things look. Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, David Bowie. They’re my heroes.

No way! I love coffee. I think I quit for a while last year and it just floated around my online profile for a bit. I did stop drinking as much. I am down to like 2-3 cups a day which feels great for me. I was drinking like 8-10. Oh yeah. I’m nicer now.

Greg Pizzoli, people. Is he awesome or what?

So yeah. That’s pretty much my favorite thing on the internet right now. Did you catch the part where the period at the end of the sentence becomes a spotlight for good old K-Roc?! I love that detail.

The Watermelon Seed! Greg Pizzoli! Thanks for hanging out here! We love your book. And you are top notch, too.

Tagged: book trailer, color palette, greg pizzoli, illustration, picture book, screenprinting, shape, texture, the watermelon seed

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I have stumbled upon something this week which has made me wonder "Why haven't I done this before?!"

Pantone comes out with colors for the Spring and Fall every year in February (I think). This includes the color of the year and the colors most companies and fashion designers will use to advertise and create.

With my goal to sell my work to manufacturing companies and to license it out, it would only make sense that I too use these colors! Certainly an "Ah ha!" moment.

Fall colors on the left, Spring on the right

Researching and finding Pantone's color groups. I find this amazing and was totally worth the work. Why? Because now I have something to follow instead of thinking "Which would be the best combination of colors to use?" Brilliant!
Resource: http://www.setufairtrade.com


Drew up this image on Sunday (?) thinking of Mother's Day and a request I received a while back. Placing the Pantone color schemes to work. Truly loved how my thoughts and problem solving was directed to other things, like painting skin, instead of what the colors where going to be.


Took it a step further and created the 10 Pantone colors for Spring/Summer and the 10 Pantone colors for Fall/Winter in watercolor. I googled this and didn't find anyone trying to re-create these colors.

Word of warning tho if you're going to copy these: probably not the most conventional way of doing it. Each set isn't made with one red, blue, and yellow like most palettes would. I just used what I had in my huge circle palette that would give me the color I was going for.

Find the list of colors used HERE.

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Aside from the fact that this is just a really great, relaxing photograph of a forest-- Ahhhhhhhhhh. Peaceful, iddinit? I also wanted to be sure everyone knows that the newest issue of The Edge of the Forest has been posted for your reading/viewing pleasure.

I had a great time interviewing the fantastic Eric Luper about his blog and his new book, BIG SLICK, as well as his footwear selections.

In addition, I have two reviews posted here. 
One is for Eric's book, and the other is S.A. Harazin's BLOOD BROTHERS, which I also reviewed for ALAN, along with a whole bunch of other books!

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This week we're talking about what color palettes we use and do we have a favorite, etc. I can't say that I have a "favorite" palette but I do use some colors consistently in my illustrations. I like to use pinks/oranges, blues/purples as a highlight, particularly the pink and blue shown in the drawing of a dragon, below. I sometimes do a lot of blending and building up of color on my drawings using a digital chalk brush in Painter X. I'll layer very light colors and top off middle-grounds with a pink. Shadows I top off with blue. I feel it gives it a warmth that I won't get if I just use a darker color of whatever the base color is I'm highlighting/shading.

I also like to experiment with using a mono-chromatic scheme (below). It pushes me to think outside of my comfort zone and try something new. Here, I've used the same dragon image from above, but used a mono-chromatic scheme in a yellow-green.

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This is one of my favorite color palettes recently. I've been using these colors alot for my 21 Day Creative Challenge:

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