Hello Melon friends, both old and new
Let us reintroduce ourselves,
We are Soph and Dan and we are life partners as well as press partners and we make up Melon Press.
Dan is a graphic designer by trade and has been making Risograph art for over 10 years. He loves playing Magic the Gathering and has an incredible comic collection.
Soph is a printmaker and press operator that has a passion for her hometown of STL. She loves making and eating pasta and collects anything with the green M&M.
We started Melon Press together in 2022 with the mission of printing beautiful work in fabulous Risograph. Our first publication, Froot Punch, threw us in headfirst making collaborative anthology magazines that feature artists across the midwest. Now we function as a Riso printer and Publisher and sell work across the country.
Thank you for sharing in this journey with us.
Stay Frooty ❤️
MP is open for Risograph printing, publishing and design services!
🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜
We do zines, flyers, menus, postcards, greeting cards, programs, art prints, comics, brochures and so much more
you can see more info on risograph printing and all of the currently available colors at
Catch these cute posters hanging up around town and at the TGFM every 1st and 3rd Saturday :)
Froot Punch 3 is here!
This has truly been a wonderful publication to put together and thank you to all of the wonderful artists that submitted to the mag.
To catch the first look, join us for the release party tonight! at 2701 Cherokee St from 5-8pm.
And you can check out the wonderful show by @low_key_ki at the Luminary while you are at it ❤️
For those that cannot make it tonight, we will have the magazine available at every fair we are attending as well as our website. And stay tuned for more posts featuring the fantastic work in the magazine!
Thank you!
Stay Frooty!
Summer Workshop Announcement!
We are happy to announce RISO workshop dates for the whole summer! Come take a chance on a new medium and have fun making art! By attending this workshop you will be using the Risograph to create 25 of your own custom prints using any of our 11 available colors.
Open to beginners, enthusiasts and professionals alike 💗
After this summer we will be taking a brief hiatus from workshops to adjust to big life changes, so catch them while you can.
And remember, these are for fun ONLY!
Link is in bio or you can find available slots at
Discounts for Luminary Members and Mail Club subscribers, ask me how!
Since coming out with Saint Louis Collection, I’ve gotten dozens of messages about prints. I’ve never done prints before so I had no idea where to start. Serendipitously, I met Sophia at the last Farmers’ Market and she had some awesome prints. I asked her where she had them made and she said she did it her herself. I was immediately ~i n t e r e s t e d~ On top of that, I was randomly introduced to Riso Printing via the internet. I loved the grain, texture, and screen printed like feel it produces. When I found out she uses a Riso to print, I was SOLD! Moving forward we’ll be printing a majority of our STL Collection design and other throwback Ope Outdoors designs with @melonpressstl . Looking forward to stepping into prints and I hope you enjoy Sophia teach us a bit about the process. She has a few workshops coming up this summer, but they are selling out quick! Book and class and hit her up if ya need stuff printed 😆 catch these prints this Saturday at the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market!
That moment when you realize that your whole life is in your own hands
I made a new print! This one is a digital drawing based on pompous renaissance noble paintings at SLAM.
Using Procreate to draw and Riso printed in Cornflower, Light Lime, Flo Pink and Black
💗💚💙🖤
🌀You want to join the Melon Press Mail Club sooooo bad🌀
🌀You want cute Riso prints, zines and stickers mailed to your front doorstep every single month🌀
🌀You want to support local artists and fill your blank walls with art 🌀
April letter includes a postcard, new prints and a sticker
🌀 Link in Bio on Patreon 🌀
Spring is coming!
With a strawberry in her mouth!
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And market season has begun! We will be at @tgfarmersmarket every first and second Saturday of the month until August :) Enjoy the sunshine, the flowers and the weeds in the park while eating farm fresh produce this season!
These are some new prints that I will have available at the market along with a cool video of the zine library.
Stay fresh, stay frooty!
4-color riso print of “A celestial wedding”, my illustration of the meeting of a ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus) and a San Francisco garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia) at twilight, intertwined with bold stars. I love how the riso print brings out the bold colors of my illustration while still giving it a warm but almost muted feel!
The diurnal (day-living) habits of the garter snake and nocturnal (night-living) behavior of the ring-necked snake means that these two, though they may exist in the same ecological niche, likely rarely interact. I imagine twilight to be almost like the ‘changing of the guard’, if you will.
Printed these using fluorescent pink, sunflower, cornflower, and burgundy inks (one color at a time) on a very nicely textured paper here in St. Louis at @melonpressstl ! Will have these available on my shop with my big spring update- posting tomorrow (Friday, March 27th) @ 3pm! :)
Many people have asked me how I design for Riso, so here is a video about my process!
I design all of my illustrations specifically for Riso using specific hex codes for inks that I have available. CMYK uses 3 primary colors plus black to create a HUGE range of shades.
Here I am using Flo Pink, Sunflower, Cornflower and Lake blue (as a sub for black) to create these lovely postcards.
Are you a Mail Club member? You may see these special edition postcards in a future package!
If you are not yet a Mail Club member, sign up to receive beautiful handmade prints delivered to your door :)
Thanks for watching!
#riso #risographprint #illustration #surrealart
Lived In
February 21st, 2026
A workshop hosted by @kellen__w and Melon Press exploring the infrastructure of our community through architectural rubbings and printmaking. How have our lives been impacted by the buildings we reside in and how do they hold memory?
Create your own rubbings of historic buildings and turn them into abstract architectural zines Saturday at the Luminary!
