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Plastic in the ocean

Artist residency with CNRS, Alliance Française de Toliara and IH.SM

A collective residency bringing together Malagasy authors around a documented subject the public knows little about: what becomes of plastic once it reaches the sea.

My story, The anger of Zanahary, starts from a tale rather than a chart. An ocean spirit punishes the people who defiled the sea. The six curses he casts are today's pollutions, told as a legend.

The sketches and colour stages are shown here next to the finished plates. They say the essential part of the craft: framing and rhythm are decided in pencil, long before colour.

Client
CNRS, Alliance Française de Toliara, IH.SM
Year
2026
Role
Script, drawing, colour
Service
Tailored scientific visuals

Behind the scenes

The creation steps

A scientific commission is not drawn in one go. Here are the real steps of this project, including the ones that produce no image at all.

  1. 01

    Read before drawing

    I start with the scientific material, not with the pencil. For this residency I had to understand what really happens to a piece of plastic once it reaches the sea: how long it floats, what it releases, who eats it. Until those mechanisms are clear in my head, an image stays decorative.

  2. 02

    Find the shape of the story

    A chart would have said the same thing and nobody would have looked at it. I searched among the stories people already know. The anger of Zanahary borrows from a legend: an ocean spirit punishes those who defiled the sea. The six curses he casts are, one by one, today's pollutions.

  3. 03

    Everything happens in pencil

    This is the step nobody sees and it decides everything. The breakdown, the size of the panels, where the eye lands when the page turns. At this stage I draw badly on purpose, fast, to judge rhythm rather than line. If a plate does not work here, colour will not save it.

  4. 04

    Scientific review

    The sketches go back to the researchers before inking. This is the cheapest moment to fix a badly drawn species or an invented fishing gear. A review round here costs an hour, the same one at the colour stage costs three days.

  5. 05

    Inking and colour

    Colour comes last and carries the emotion. Flat colours go down first, then the texture of the water. Here the blues of the sea grow murkier panel after panel, as the curse advances. The reader does not notice it consciously, but feels it.

  6. 06

    Deliver a finished object

    A lone plate is useless. You need the cover, the poster, the author credits, the files in the right format for the printer. It is the least spectacular part of the job and the one that decides whether the work actually ships.