THEARTOFGEVANS.COM is an art and humour site founded by satirical writer, artist, crank, and cantankerous malcontent G. Billington Evans. Here you will find humorous articles and hand-drawn digital artworks with no superheroes, mechs, manga, furries, arty-farty, avante-garde concepts, or any of that hippie crap.
The artworks may not possess much in the way of thought-provoking “deconstructions of the post-war consumerist zeitgeist,” but what they do possess is life. It may not be animate or sentient, but it’s life nonetheless. We don’t have time to get into it here, but I invite you to take a lesson, or even just watch a video on figure drawing and learn about gesture. Gesture in art refers to the capturing of movement and action in a drawing through quick, loose lines. A framework that runs through the form. You’ll see these lines running through every organic thing under creation, whether it’s a graceful ballerina or a guy on the crapper, and from every possible angle. They are what gives life to the subject on the page. They are a visual representation of structure in life. Everybody seems to think that life is inherently random and we’re all just a collection of random blobs. These lines are made up of roughly a 50/50 balance between straight lines and curves, with a plumb line running down the form to anchor it all together. That doesn’t sound like any “random blob” I’ve ever heard of.
Life has a rhyme, a reason, and a structure. If you regard life as random, then that’s exactly how it’s going to turn out. And with eight billion people all living in “Random-Land,” is it any wonder the world’s in the shitter? Things should pan out for you if you acknowledge the plan and act accordingly. And if the mere act of drawing life onto a piece of paper can teach you that, then all the deep meaning you could ever need is in the technical act of drawing. Any attempt to give it any more meaning than that is a bunch of highfalutin hippie shit.
“I approach drawing like an athletic pursuit. It’s either that or go nuts. I love what I make. The process of making it, however, can get f*cked. There’s an expectation that you have to love doing it or you’re an a**hole. By that rationale I might as well just go ahead and bin all of my work regardless of how well it turned out just because I’m not thrilled with the idea of continuous frustration, a bad back and carpel tunnel syndrome. And I’m an a**hole anyway. Who cares why I do it? Mind your own damn business.
These paintings require serious stamina. Mine can sometimes take weeks of blood, sweat and tears. Enjoyment is a secondary consideration to performance as far as I’m concerned. If you want to enjoy yourself, go be a hobbyist and shut the hell up. An athlete accepts a certain amount of pain to perform at an elite level. I do the same, which is where I find the meaning and is what gets me through the travail. Even if it’s blatant cope and makes me look like a delusional knob.”
– G. Billington Evans.
©2025 G. Evans