“At the same time he saw a fisherman come out of the cave who was so ugly, so hideous, he looked just like a sea monster. Instead of hair he had a dense bush of green grass on his head, green was his skin, green were his eyes, and green was his long beard which reached all the way to the ground. He looked like an emerald lizard walking on its hind legs.”
In other words, a nice monster to draw.


The fisherman has grown together with his oil suit. The hair/grass grows on and through it. Like a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. He also has large claws and an angry head, somewhat in green lizard shape.
At the top, Pinocchio swims away from the dog Alidoro, whom he rescued in the previous scene. This drawing did not end up in the book.



During the design of the book, the placement and format of each drawing are determined.
We wanted this to be a large drawing in the book. The designers put it on the right page because that’s what you see first when turning the page. It gives the drawing extra impact.

The drawing had to be mirrored now. Since the reading direction is from left to right, your view now collides with the fisherman, as it were, and you remain trapped in the book, like Pinocchio is trapped in the fishing net.
The dominant direction of this drawing is determined by the angle of view of the fisherman, which is now also directed into the book. All of this supports the anxious anguish of this scene.



If the drawing is not mirrored, your gaze is led out of the book, as it were, further supported by the reading direction and the fact that the fisherman has his back turned to the text.

This shows that the design has an important substantive meaning.





I had already thought of the bigger net when making the first sketch. It is indeed better, and funnier. Pinocchio's situation is much more dire and it is more likely that the fisherman is not immediately aware of him.



Pencil:
I used the monitor/light table trick again (see Making of 1: Pinocchio and the Snake) to transfer the digital sketch to paper.
I wanted the hairy beard to continue into a long tail, like a lizard has, but there was not enough room for that. There is only a small piece left of the tail I intended. The smoke trails are still in the background of the in the pencil drawing, but in the ink version I left them out. I thought it would be better without a background.



Ink:
In the first sketch, Pinocchio's gaze is somewhat undefined and in the pencil version he looks anxiously ahead. It is a funny face, but the situation would be more tense if Pinocchio was aware of his surroundings. Now he looks up in anxious anticipation at the pile of fish and the fisherman.

The pencil version and the ink version no longer exist, of course. As you understand it’s all just one sheet of paper and now only the finished version exists.
I made these intermediate scans just to be sure. If I screwed up the drawing at a later stage, I would at least have a digital version as reference for a new drawing. I think I only needed it once, but because of this precaution I now have a lot of making-of material to show.



Colour:
Green, of course, with some green-blue accents because an green lizard is, after all, not only green, but also blueish.
The fish in muted tones so that Pinocchio's red nose pops out nicely.



There was only room for one drawing of the fisherman in the book. We had to leave this beautiful action scene out, with pain in our hearts!
Alidoro in turn rescues Pinocchio, who looks like a fish tied up and anxiously watches the fight. The fisherman does have a long beard/tail here. Like a lizard.