The Pianist

John Donachie

Interview by C. VanWinkle
April 16, 2025

What was the prompt that you responded to? Can you describe it for me?

It was a piece of music played on piano. Now, I'm not very musical. I listen to a variety of different music genres, but a piano solo, in the context of what you'd asked me to do, was quite tricky. As I was listening to it, I was thinking, “This is very nice, but I don't know anything about music. What am I going to do?” It was a proper challenge. I ended up taking myself away from the piece and just using it as the prompt for wherever it would take me. The meandering journey of the piece of music—which was lovely, I must commend the musician on a beautiful piece of music—was a fantastic place to start.

I’m an artist and illustrator. Over time, that’s becoming a larger and larger part of my identity than what I set out as, which was entertaining myself as an artist and if people thought what I did was funny, then good. So, visual art is predominantly where I play. A problem I have is that I haven't settled on a distinctive style. Pet portraits, specific commissions for role playing games or podcasts, comics, illustrations of things like pole-dancing axolotls or frogs or whatever takes my fancy. But I do a fair amount of comics. If I have a silly idea, then I try to illustrate it in a comic form rather than just posting the words to Bluesky as a joke. Over the course of the last five years, I’ve done a lot of those.

I see. So you listened to the prompt, didn’t have an immediate interpretation to go with, and ended up creating something within your comfort zone, which is a silly comic.

I draw a lot of dancers, but this music didn't lend itself to that. Also, I'm not very abstract in terms of my art, including my jokes. They can be quite literal. For example, this piece is an entirely literal interpretation of a fairly established idiom in music.

It’s quite interesting when you say “comfort zone,” because none of this ever feels like my comfort zone. With anything that I make, I’m always racked with self-doubt. If anybody ever shares anything that I've done on social media, I always make sure to tell them “Thanks for sharing” because it’s just polite and doesn't happen often enough that I've become blasé about it.

I think it’s pretty standard for a lot of artists to feel vulnerable about sharing their work, but particularly if someone is trying to be funny. That seems like an extra layer of vulnerability.

The way I immunize myself against that is to ask myself, “Do I think this is funny?” Sometimes I get feedback from my close friends: “Just because you think it’s funny, it doesn't mean that anyone else will understand what you're trying to say.” And I'm like, “Some will, and that's probably good enough.” You can guess that there will be three people that understand a reference to some 1970s movie or something, and it will be enough for me that somebody out there got it and got a kick out of it and as long as I think it's funny. The other thing is what I'm asking someone to do to make the joke work. They might need to know two or three culturally niche things and put them together to make it work. Sometimes that lands and sometimes it doesn't.

I find that the more popular a post gets on social media, once it goes over 100 likes, then you start getting people that will say, “I don't get it,” or criticize the joke. The best feedback (I was going to say the worst but it’s the best) you can get if you post a comic is from those I’d call Joke Improvers. “It would be funnier if you said this,” or “It'd be funnier if this person did that.” I might have tried that if I thought it was funny or had thought of it!. Or draw your own comics! If you're so funny, you do it!

So how did you get started putting this one together?

I sat down with a piece of paper and thought about 15 directions I could take it.

Ah yes, you sent me a picture of a notebook page full of ideas. Is that often where your process begins? Doodling puns?

That’s just for this exercise. I have a note on my phone and when an idea or a turn of phrase will strike me as funny, I’ll think, “That's a comic or a drawing or something.” My note is extensive and it’s just a lot of different ideas. Sometimes I'm drawing jumping dogs or medieval skeletons, a lot of different things. I have a few themes and no particular art style. Typically, quite a lot of the work is digital. So I write stuff on my phone and then draw on my iPad in Procreate or doodle on the Pocket Procreate app on my phone.

With materials like oil paints and watercolors and things like that, I can do it. You've probably heard me say this before: “I can draw, I just choose not to.” [both laugh] I do thoroughly enjoy life drawing and en plein air. When I do a pencil portrait sketch or something—I call it coffee sketching because I’m sitting doing it in a café somewhere —I’m reminded that I can draw. It's good to practice ‘real drawing’ but it's also nice to just illustrate a Bob Fosse-choreographed red panda every now and again. Because, isn't that what everybody wants?

I think so! And if you’re drawing something fun and silly like that, who’s to say you’re wrong? Who’s to say that’s not how a frog would look while pole dancing?

Oh it definitely is. I’ve thought about it far too much. [Cody laughs loudly] I don't really know why I do this stuff. It entertains me so that is enough.

That's beautiful. I discovered by making something for Bait/Switch years ago that I have a passion for clown design. It got me started on this whole series of clown drawings and it turns out I really enjoy figuring out different characters and drawing their clothes and makeup and stuff. I had no idea that I would be into that until then.

I adore clowning. It’s been many years, but before illustration I used to do close-up magic and things as a vent for being creative. It’s quite interesting because the process to be a magician is quite mechanical and boring actually. There is an A-to-Z to follow, and the books are extensively detailed about where you put your fingers, and at which phalange you put the card when you're flipping it with your finger. Meticulous and quite dull, but once you can do it, then something magical happens.

I remember once being in a magic circle meeting. There was a guy there who was a professional clown, and honestly he was the most serious, most boring man I've ever met in my entire life. He talked extensively, like 25 minutes, about his shoes, his massive shoes.

Oh my!

It was like a TED Talk from a professional clown. It’s his living so all credit to him. But he had to get his specific shoes tailor-made because he's in those shoes all day. And wearing massive, leather shoes is actually quite uncomfortable if you're entertaining 45 children. And can be quite dangerous! [laughs]

Entertaining children at all is already going to be pretty uncomfortable.

You have to think about the comfort factor when you're designing clowns. How long has this guy got to stand in this outfit, and will he fit in a barrel wearing that? Or a small car?

I know I’m a clown. The things I do and the things I say, I have to ask myself if it’s going to be funny first. Am I being stupid enough to entertain myself through this conversation? And that's the way that I live my life, for better or worse.

Silliness is definitely a common thread through just about all of your work that I’ve seen on the socials. [Editor’s note: John’s handle on Instagram and Bluesky is @jaunty.art.]

I'm not the most prolific or popular creator on there because I make it difficult for people to latch onto what I do. But I've just consistently been growing over time and it's not really a big priority of mine. I try not to be a slave to an algorithm.

Plus, it’s not like you create completely unrelated things into infinity. You’ve got your regular themes that I think allow people to follow along pretty well. “Oh, he's doing some of these again!” They’re familiar.

That's absolutely fair, I’ve got five or six themes like that. Comics, jumping dogs, skeletons, movies, pop art, pole-dancing people or animals… A variety of different things. Though Jaunty Art is sometimes quite dark. And “jaunty” makes it even funnier considering some of the things that I’ve made.

The first series I discovered of yours were those pieces about the movie Groundhog Day. Those got pretty dark.

I enjoyed doing them! I think I did about 15 or 16 of them. For some context, those were “Groundhog Day loops we don't talk about.” Somebody calculated it that Bill Murray was in there for at least 10,000 days. That's a lot of days. For sure, some of the days he probably just stayed in his bed. They played with that theme in the movie Palm Springs. The idea was that Andy Samberg had been in a loop for 100,000 days and didn't see a way of getting out. So he had tried absolutely everything for kicks because of the reset. For Groundhog Day, I wondered what if he dressed like a Spaghetti Western cowboy and just shot Ned Ryerson in the face? [laughs] Or slept with the old man? Things like that. I just thought it was funny. You know, he uses a chainsaw very proficiently when he makes the ice sculptures, so what if he used that on those kids in the park instead of the snowballs?

Right! Hey, if there are no consequences…

It was probably in that period of time when he found a way to get out.

Okay, last question. What advice would you give a new person just getting their prompt today?

I think the idea is to stay true to yourself about what you want to do. Just try and figure out what it is that you want to convey from what you’ve got. The next important thing is not to try and repeat what you have seen. Do something that's in your wheelhouse to some degree, that plays on the idea and extrapolates from it something that you want to communicate about yourself and the work that you do. But primarily, don't overthink it because then you lose the spark or the magic or whatever you would call it. And also don't use AI.

Call Number: B121MU | B122VA.doPi

​​John Donachie: I’m a Scottish self-taught artist and illustrator who has created various illustrations, drawings, comics, and sketches. I predominantly work in digital media but dabble in pencil drawing, charcoal, oils and acrylics. I’m geeky and silly and find myself drawing, or thinking about drawing, whenever I get the chance.