I'm nearly twenty-six and live in Strasbourg (France), where I work as an illustrator. I love both reading books and making them myself, and in my drawings, I use lots of different colours and symbols to create several layers of meaning. This ‘curious world’ is a distortion of my everyday life, of things I learn and feel.

I love folk art! I spent so much time at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne. I think there's everything to learn from people who helplessly and sincerely create complex, alternative worlds. I'm not as fascinated by innocence as I am by sincerity, and I’m more interested in showing the complexity of life than its lightness.

I'm not obsessive enough as to have a set palette with colours corresponding precisely to emotions; the first purpose of colours is to please the eyes. But each drawing has a particular emotion attached – especially when it is part of a story –, so I pick the colours to match that emotion. This is my favourite part of the process. I like to tell different stories at the same time, as both the text and images form a narration. Sometimes, inside the images are other parallel stories. In my book 6-4-2, the colours of the landscape change according to emotions, regardless of geography.

These images show fantasies. Isn't it something you would want to see closely? (Smiles)

Yes! Especially René Magritte. He was so prolific that I keep discovering more paintings of his. I love how he was able to create so much sense with such little vocabulary.

I'm definitely an introvert, like the main character in 6-4-2, Auguste. When starting this book project, I read Quiet, by Susan Cain, which separates the world into these two categories. Since then, I think that everyone has a portion of both. Being alone is, for me, the only way to explore ideas and create. But it can also provoke anxiety. As an illustrator, it is sometimes hard to ‘stay the course’ and keep balanced. For now, I try to keep myself busy with short and long-term projects, a small job on the weekends and a lot of friend-seeing.

It wouldn't be falling apart like ours! I don't know if it shows in my drawings but I'm very anxious about environmental and social issues. I hope to show both the beauty of existing nature and landscapes but also to create impossible utopic backgrounds to escape from reality.

Actually, we are currently writing a short film about someone who can't stand change and fears abandonment. Making a film requires being much more open to the world, it is a whole lot more of trouble, but it is also very rewarding and interesting to work directly with other people. It’s another way of finding balance. Antoine and I have talked about making a videogame together, let's see if that happens. In the meantime, I highly recommend playing his one!

I myself enjoy seeing doodles or preparatory drawings of artists I admire, so yes. And I think Instagram and other social media always ask for some storytelling.

In Bretagne, in summer, we’re on the patio of Nelly's house and the sun is setting. We've already had a couple of beers while cooking and open the red wine while eating melon and olives. There's bread on the table – not a baguette but a whole wheat bread. Friends and family talk loudly. The main dish is a huge ratatouille with vegetable and herbs from the garden and polenta on the side. As the night falls, we eat dessert; one of my friend Thibault's strange experimentations. Something not very pretty. Maybe with rose, lime and oats… or with pumpkin, sage and dates.

Self-promotion is not something I like doing very much. But since that’s how it works today, I try my best to make the most of different tools and possibilities. It’s hard to keep a cool head sometimes with the ‘like’ and ‘follower’ system, and it’s definitely something I’d like to escape. But the Internet (as wonderful as it is) is becoming a huge environmental disaster that nobody cares about. Even if it may sound totally in vain, I always resize images, never send email attachments if not needed, unsubscribe from mailing lists, etc. It’s like keeping Internet hygiene. So yes, I mostly dream about a simpler time before the Internet, but then I would miss watching documentaries and would probably have to change jobs.

It's a short zine about a person who is given an object and tries to find out what it is. When she realizes that it is love she’s received, she decides to get rid of it. It is a way of reflecting about my recent separation, as the stories I tell are always personal – but encrypted and digested. My biggest dream is to get into other people’s minds and feel what they feel – so why not start off by telling how it is in my own head?