Overcoming the expressive power of words through illustration with Raphaelle Macaron

Driven by her emotions, illustrator Raphaelle Macaron tells us how she draws energy and motivation from her inner self. More than an inspiration, it is a real desire to mobilise her personal emotions or those of her audience in order to convey to people feelings that are sometimes difficult to communicate.

Sometimes, your work reflects your Lebanese influences. How do your origins inspire you in your work? Is the Lebanese political and social situation an important theme in your work? I am for instance thinking about the amount of money you were able to raise following the Beirut disaster.

Let’s say it’s more than an influence, it’s my subject. It is my subject because I am 100% Lebanese, I grew up all my life in Lebanon, I only left 5 years ago to settle in Paris after a year in Montreal. In the beginning, it was in order to be able to do what I wanted to do because living from comics in Lebanon was complicated, it’s a small country and it didn’t really work. However, for the last 5 years, it’s been very dynamic… And so at the beginning, I didn’t ask myself the question of the subject but of the work. I quickly realized that there was a lot of narrative in the projects I was undertaking, it’s natural for me, and it’s as much narratively as visually that Lebanon inspires me. I grew up with these images, and I love typography. I speak three languages too, and it’s always a question for me how to interweave the three languages: English-French, French-Arabic, Arabic-English…

How do you work on your illustrations most of the time? What techniques do you use?

Systematically, when I work on an illustration, I start by drawing it several times, about ten times, in very small formats and several compositions. Once I have found the composition, I do the drawing, the “pencil”. Then comes the inking, which I always used to do on a light table, with a brush and ink, and this is my favourite part of the production. All my references are masters of inking. For the last two years, I’ve been working on an Ipad, so I do my inking on this medium, because it has the same textures as the brushes, and it’s true that it avoids the scanned part of the image. But at the moment, I feel like going back to manual inking, and so I try to alternate. On an illustration, I give myself the pleasure to do it with ink and brush… and the pleasure comes from having an original piece of art at the end, for me, it’s really very nice. But when I know that it’s for the press, that I have to return a drawing in two days, I try to avoid the time of scanning and cleaning the image. The result is really often the same than the manual process. The colour is done digitally, I’m attracted to very bright, pop colours, and there’s no real texture, so the digital colour is ideal for that.

You were talking about your inspirations, what are those references that guide you in your work?

For comics, I’ve always read teenage comics, and then I went for independent comics. My absolute master is Daniel Clowes… I am also inspired by Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Charles Burns or Nick Drnaso. Otherwise, I’m very inspired by Japanese graphic designers and illustrators of the 1970s, including Tadanori Yokoo. An extremely free guy, who allows himself anything and everything, who is really super inspiring, this is the kind of book I look at to open my head and not repeat myself in composition systems.

Of course, there is also the whole tradition of the poster and oriental imagery, which comes mainly from Egypt, and which inspires me enormously, precisely because it’s all about typography and languages. Because these are Arabic posters that were intended to be exported internationally, so Latin lettering had to be used. There are quite a few Lebanese posters from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that also inspire me. But generally speaking, it’s vintage imagery. I think it shows.

The Samandal Comics collective exists since 2007, and you joined it in 2014. In 2017, for the collective’s 10th anniversary, you had the opportunity to lead the creation of the anniversary issue as editor-in-chief. What does the Samandal Comics collective bring to you?

Since 2014, Samandal Comics releases one issue per year, with one editor-in-chief per year. In 2017, I managed the publication, and the theme was “Topie”, which means utopia or dystopia – any kind of projection into another world. This publication was printed in three languages, Arabic, French, English, and produced in risograph. Today, the collective has grown, it is very dynamic, there are many new members, it is a very horizontal work. When someone has an idea for a publication, he directs it and is supported by the others. The situation in Lebanon has meant that many things have been delayed. It’s quite organic, we meet regularly, we share our ideas, we all have our personal projects, everyone’s commitment varies according to time and personal projects. This is what makes the dynamics of the collective rich.

You often collaborate with other artists, creative minds, other organisations… what interests you get in collaborative work?

It’s true that my work is very solitary, and therefore the fact that I surround myself with other people, artists, and make collaborations is very interesting. In the case of Noel Mamere, it’s someone I was not meant to meet. I didn’t even know who he was. There was something very enriching in this pair, something very incongruous. The collaboration was very unexpected. Collaborating when you are an author, an independent artist, allows you to feed yourself. I get a lot of nourishment from my encounters, I’m someone who has a fairly high social need, so collaborations feed me a lot. And the fact that I work in a studio in Paris with other drawers, other artists, enriches me a lot as well. I couldn’t work from home and be alone all the time.

Is there an emotional approach that you try to convey in your illustrations? An emotional thread that could be attributed to your work?

Yes, I even think that there is only an emotional approach to my work. Not because it’s a choice of style, but because it’s my way of working, and it’s what drives me every time. I’m very motivated by something I feel, or something I’ve seen or heard that has touched me, moved me. That’s how I work. Especially when it comes to social, political or ecological commitment. The real question is what I manage to transmit to people, but I prefer not to ask myself this question, because it can quickly immobilise me. In the book with Noel Mamere, I tried a lot to focus on empathy, precisely on the emotions, you can feel when faced with the idea that the world may collapse, that it will never be the same again. These are strong emotions, mourning, despair, anguish, helplessness, and they are emotions that are quite difficult to communicate. That’s why I chose to portray myself in this book, it was the most direct and honest way to convey these emotions, without any superfluous or over-playing. Having a character who is completely stressed throughout the book allowed me to easily convey these emotions. There are people who felt this anxiety, others who laughed at this self-derision, others on whom it didn’t work.

But yes, emotion is one of my biggest motors.

What does 2021 mean to you? What are your plans, after this year relatively crazy in emotions?

I’m trying to be optimistic, like everyone else I think. I hope that it will be the year of change, especially for Lebanon, because 2020, for Lebanon, has been particularly difficult. I hope that this is the year when things will change. More personally, I hope that it will be a year in which I will be able to concentrate on my next book, which is a story I wrote a long time ago, and I will start producing this album then. It’s a project that I hope will really happen.