Daukantė is a Lithuanian illustrator who draws the small, absurd moments most of us walk straight past — a grandmother selling bubble gum, a man guarding his watermelons, an office where nobody is working. She lives and works in Vilnius, draws with coloured pencils and markers on paper, and gets most of her ideas from a good pun. We asked her where the jokes come from, what the story is behind her Cher drawing, and where her prints belong at home. The answers are her own.
Who is Daukantė?
She became an illustrator partly out of stubbornness. “Studying graphic design at Art Academy, we were encouraged not to illustrate. It was even said that graphic designers do not need to know how to draw. I guess that irritated me and I wanted to draw for every assignment.”
She went on to take two degrees: a BA in Graphic Design from the Vilnius Academy of Arts and an MA in Information Design from Design Academy Eindhoven — a school known for conceptual thinking and experiments. It pushed her the other way. Instead of big concepts, she looks for the ordinary: the casual, everyday situations she finds far more intriguing.
What does her art look like?
In her own words: “Narrative illustrations featuring comedic situations.” Every drawing is a little scene with a character in it, and almost always a small joke you only notice on the second look.
Her side hustle series is the clearest example. A man in a tracksuit and green clogs sells seaside paintings from a ladder. A grandmother in pink blows a bubble the size of her head behind a stall of bubble gum. A man in shorts hugs a watermelon next to a sign promising perfect melons, and his neighbour holds up a sign that says no free samples. It is all drawn by hand in coloured pencil on a warm, paper-coloured background, so the prints have the soft, slightly grainy look of a real drawing.
The side hustle series
Watermelon side hustleDaukantė
Bubble gum side hustleDaukantė
Cherry side hustleDaukantė
Seaside side hustleDaukantė
Lavender side hustleDaukantė
Coffee side hustleDaukantė
Where to start: pick two or three side hustles and hang them as a row — they are drawn on the same warm background and belong together. See all prints by Daukantė →
Where do the ideas come from?
Her list of inspirations reads like a list of things most people find slightly embarrassing: “Mistakes made while speaking, puns, words that have several meanings, nice food packaging, production design in movies, people believing things I don't believe in.”
Words come first surprisingly often. She is visually minded but has a soft spot for language, and a pun she enjoys tends to suggest a little story, which she then builds on while drawing. Pop culture is the other source. It shows how absurd the world already is, and she likes to draw it as it is — there are enough great stories every day to laugh and marvel at.
The artists she names are illustrators who also find the comedy in daily life: Tara Booth, Javier Sáez Castán and Sally Nixon.
The story behind the Cher drawing
It is the longest title in the shop, and it started on a bad day. “After graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven I was a bit lost and was on YouTube a lot. I was suggested to watch an interview by Cher and enjoyed listening to her talk. There was one video where she laughed about how someone described her never-ending career and said: ‘The only things that will be left after a nuclear holocaust are cockroaches and Cher.’ I decided to illustrate exactly that scene.”
And she did, literally. A diva in a purple sequin dress crouches in the middle of a ruined city, mushroom clouds rising behind her, surrounded by cockroaches the size of cats. Look closer and the rubble is full of small details — broken signs, overturned desks, shattered glass — which is exactly why people stand in front of it for a while.
A day in the studio
Honest, and probably familiar: “I get up worried that there is a lot to do and start working. Usually it starts with client work in the morning and then if I have time in the evening I do some self-initiated work, like an illustration, a product I am trying to develop or a ceramic object. And I usually end up working till late evening.”
Right now the evenings belong to Christmas. “I am busy building my ‘Carnival’ ornament collection. Those are tiny clay men made from clay and dressed as something different each year. This year so far, I have men dressed as carrots and chairs. We will see what October and November will bring.”
“Maybe wonder if it's an old drawing found at a second hand market.”
What should you feel in front of one?
“I would like them to feel a bit nostalgic,” she says — as if the print were an old drawing you had found at a flea market. The bigger pieces do something else as well: “Since they are busy with details, people tell me they keep using them as ‘Where's Waldo?’”
That is a good way to look at her large scenes. In Any Office, everyone in a crowded open-plan office is doing anything but work. In One with Nature, a man in a suit has lain down among a colony of sea lions, one pink flip-flop in the air. They are drawings you keep finding new things in, months after you hung them.
Big scenes, full of details
Any OfficeDaukantė
One with NatureDaukantė
Thank you but NO, 50 BagsDaukantė
One way to stop hiccups…Daukantė
Our tip: the detailed scenes work best large — 70×100 cm or bigger — so people can find the small jokes. See the collection →
Where do her prints look best?
She sees two ways to hang them. “Since my work is usually very colorful, I can imagine a bigger piece in a clean interior, but also it fit into already a very colorful and eclectic space.” In other words: one big print as the only colour on a white wall, or a mix of her drawings in a room that is already full of life.
Her own favourite company for them is older things: “I like my work paired with old furniture or inherited wall art.” A side hustle print next to your grandmother's painting, above a second-hand sideboard, is exactly the idea.
For a row of three or a mixed wall, our gallery wall templates give you the exact measurements, and our oak and black frames fit the prints exactly.
Something you might not know
Two things. “I have an orange cat named Bosch.” He turns up in her studio photos, usually lying on top of whatever she is working on. And: “I have a broken finger that healed wrong, so doctors told me I won't be a pianist.” It clearly has not stopped her drawing.
The collection
All Daukantė prints, from A4 to 100×140 cm
Printed to fit our frames exactly — in oak, black or colour.
Shop DaukantėFollow Daukantė on Instagram as @daukante_draws, and see more of her work at daukante.com.