From linocut to iPad: a digital twist on James Foley’s classic illustrations

To celebrate the release of Bigfoot vs Yeti, hear from author/illustrator James Foley on how he approached working in a different style for his new picture book.

The seed of the book came in 2012-ish: I had an idea for a character, but I didn’t know how she came about or how her world looked. The plot of the book came from trying to answer those questions, and I’d been chipping away at it for 12 years until it was ready to be published. So without giving anything away, I started at the end point of the book and worked backwards.

I originally assumed I would illustrate the book in colour, but my test illustrations were missing something. I realised that it might be better to illustrate the book in black and white, as this would make the difference between the Bigfoot and Yeti clans as obvious as possible, and also reflect the way they were seeing their conflict (and the whole world) in black and white. You can’t get more polarised than black and white! It’s only when some of the characters start to understand nuance – noticing the similarities between them, rather than focusing on the differences – that they begin to see things in colour and 3 dimensions. So the two styles of the book reflect that inner journey the characters take; and the characters that don’t change their attitudes stay stuck in black and white.

Linocut printing seemed an obvious choice for the main illustration style; it’s most often printed in plain black and white; it’s gritty and graphic and precise; and it’s associated with old fables and fairy tales, which this story feels like. But I chose to do a digital version of the linocut process rather than actual, physical printmaking, which allowed me to work more quickly and precisely while still retaining that grittiness. It was virtually the same process as normal linocut – I still had to create the illustrations from thousands of tiny notches – only it was all done on my iPad.

Bigfoot vs Yeti is available now from all good bookstores and online.