The Daily Dot’s Comic Artist in Residence program will feature the work of a beloved and up-and-coming Internet illustrator. The artist will publish a new original comic once a day for a week on our section. The series will run once every month.
Anxiety lurks within every corner and pen stroke of comic artist Beth Evans’s life.
Twenty-four-year-old Evans’s deftly honest comics capture the feelings of self-doubt that can roll over a person like a fast-moving fog.
“[Anxiety is] a bit of a chameleon,” Evans told the Daily Dot. “Sometimes it’s huge and overbearing, and sometimes it’s this annoying little creature that follows me around.”
Beth Evans
The above comic was published on her Tumblr blog butthorn, where it has collected an astonishing 88,000 notes, a number that reflects how many times a piece of content has been liked, reblogged, or commented on.
For some Tumblr users, Evans’s illustrations are both a form of therapy and a mirror that reflects a person’s feelings.
“[O]h wow this is me for the last 48 hours,” commented Tumblr user candy-luminous-sky.
One of Evans’s first comic successes came on Valentine’s Day 2012.
Evans combined her love for the hit AMC show Breaking Bad with her childhood passion of exchanging Valentine’s Day cards to create a series of illustrations even a stone-cold meth dealer could love.
Beth Evans
“To my surprise, they were all over the Internet,” Evans said from her home outside of Chicago. “Articles, famous people tweeted about them, it was so amazing. I got a nice letter from a member of the production crew of the show. I was over the moon!”
One of Evans’s longtime fans is fellow artist Ruby Elliot, who attributes her growing success to the honesty in her work.
“Not only are [the comics] funny, but I can relate to many of the themes she explores through her work—namely those to do with mental health,” Elliot said. “I think what Beth manages to do so well is discuss quite powerful and emotive topics whilst retaining a really pleasing and endearing quality to her artwork. She manages to condense a lot of feelings into a simple image.”
Illustrations by Beth Evans
