dba's not dead !

Hello fellows,

sorry for this too long abscence. I wish I had more time to make paintings, especially with Verve.
But eventually I could not resist anymore. I had to dive in Verve again ! At least temporarly. That's how was born this spooky witch that I hope you'll enjoy. Don't know when I'll find time again for more pictures but, hey, what a relief it has been ! And happily I made this just before the recent events here in France which, as you all know, dramatically changed the meaning of drawing today. It will need some time before I can feel free to do illustrations again. For now, I'm too much Charlie.

Peace to everybody and wish you a beautiful year of freedom.

[Taron]

First of all: Y A Y, you're BACK! Happy New Year to you!
But I have to admit, I have no idea what happened in France!? I just tried looking and there's something about a terror attack and a kosher supermarket hostage situation. In other words: I have no clue?!
I don't watch TV or News for a long time now as I had enough of the dreadful propaganda machine. I get my fix of what people are made to believe by listening to them, hehe, and some American and British entertainment TV shows I download as guilty pleasure.
So, though, I may well be of the more rare type out there, "all" do not know.

What I do know, though, is: O M G, dba, that's quite possibly the most amazing picture on the whole forum thus far!


Just stunning!

Thanks a lot Taron, your enthusiasm is so much appreciated !

I really understand your need of keeping away from main "information" propaganda machine.

Here in France we have a satirical newspaper magazine called Charlie Hebdo, one of the last expression of freedom spirit, one of the last to dare make fun about all the stupids fundamentalists everywhere in world, being politics or religious. And the most important thing : the magazine is mainly made of cartoons, made by people we all know very well because they disturb the politically correct mood since almost 50 years ! Some hates them of course, some love them, but in any case they are part of our family.

On last Wednesday morning, masked gunmen attacked the Paris offices of the magazine, killing 12 people with automatic weapons before escaping by car, yelling allahu akbar, and claiming they did that to avenge the prophet. The victims include very well known cartoonists. Some of them are in our culture since we were kids. They have been beloved guides for a lot of us, teaching us pleasure of art, courage for standing against stupidity and keeping away from being to serious.
The terrorists escaped during two days and finaly were killed yesterday by police after two other hostage standoffs (one in a jewish supermarket) in which four more inocent people died.
Hundreds of thousands marched across France to pay tribute to the victims of the attacks of the past three days and there will be others tomorow. Everywhere, not only in France, people changed their twitter or facebook avatar for : "we are Charlie" in a lot of different language. Everywhere, people (including me) realised that drawing is really a weapon, something that can change world. This magazine was mostly despised, now their artists are super-heros. As many artists, I did some drawings that are exposed in several public places.

As my english is what it is, I suggest you to read articles where it will be exposed in a better way.

[Taron]

Oh, man.
First of all, I'm so sorry about all these losses and especially those cartoonists. But what I'm most worried about is how the propaganda machine succeeds in creating this coming war. While people are made to believe this was about religions clashing again, it really is nothing but the fight of two systems. I'm quite certain it is the leadership of "western" societies that wants to swat two flies with one strike: Unify the trade-/financial system and fuel another big war with plenty of casualties and a resulting submissive populous, further pushed into believing in even tighter scarcity, probably.
I very much believe that all of this is "staged" or- at the very least- instigated by our own leadership to continue this development of hatred and fear against Islam. At the same time it creates that expectation for Islamic societies of hatred from western people, equally producing fear and anger.
I don't know, if anyone even cares to fight the true root of this by pushing on all fronts to clarify that religion has nothing to do with this, that belief has nothing to do with this, but that those are merely used to create a pretext for the real agenda.
Dark, dark times are ahead and we should do our very best to bring as much light as we can with what we do!

Hm, I should add that I hope to be very, very wrong about all this, of course.

Well, after the drama, now comes the time of new fight : intelligence versus ignorance. Lot of people are working very hard to explain what you says and a lot are doing the exact opposite. As always I'd say. Here in France we will have presidential elections in the next two years. This will decides a lot of things. Will people listen their dark fears or will they chose light ? Same question for all Europe. Futur only knows ... Let's keep hope. What other choice do we have ?

[Taron]

At the end (still hijacking your beautiful thread) our choice is to do what we understand to be the right thing and contribute to a healthier atmosphere with all our decisions. That's the most we can do at any rate.
Germany has big demonstrations against Islam and demonstrations against those demonstrations, but- really- this just means to fuel the troubles; it creates sides.
It reminds me to this comedic concept of saying:"I've heard people say that you're a rotten bastard, but I don't share their opinion at all."
The other vicious thing is that sometimes truth doesn't have to line up with reality. Similar to most, if not all, "democratic elections". It's not about counting ballots, but selling the idea that a certain party or official has received the most votes. This does not have to be true at all! "Public opinion" is created and not measured, I'm quite sure about that.

Ho boy, I so agree ! I can't believe you pointed exactly what's happening right now, two days after the sad events : creating sides. Some of us try to use the situation to enforce unity, politics and lot of famous people are doing the oposite. They are already struggling about who should come to the walking tribute and who should not. Hopeless ... But the spontaneous will of people to remain in solidarity with the victims and to show that terrorists do not scare us is a very welcome feeling in a country where everybody seems often so sleepy.

They have killed the creators of the illustrated pages of our youth!

Cool painting Dba!

dba, welcome back. Thrilled to see a new cool painting from you, and news-wise, so sad to see what has happened in the last week.

Thanks mates