Again, these were all drawn with ArtRage, with the exception of All Around Me, which is about half PS and half ArtRage.

These had longer writeups but I don’t feel like digging them up from the depths of the digital abyss. The first one is inspired by Jewish Kabbalah – “Sod” is the most esoteric of the four levels of Torah interpretation. It means “secret”. And what does the guy hold in his hand? Um, I guess that’s the Sod ;]

The second is more controversial… basically I got fed up with the fact that Hungarian right-wing extremists were taking everything that was traditionally Hungarian and claiming it to be their own. This in turn led people who refused to share their political views to feel a certain disdain for these symbols, which I personally found – and still find – alternately saddening and infuriating…. so this is a kind of attempt both to reclaim these symbols and to express my rather conflicting feelings associated with them.

The Turul is the mythical bird that’s the national animal of Hungarians. The Hungarian Runes simply say “Turul”. Red and white stripes – here red and black stripes – were on the original flag of the House of King Árpád in its latter years. I preserved the red-and-white color scheme in the background, and if anyone notices, um, more familiar historical allusions… oh well.

(And yes, the Hebrew is not accidental either.)

Both images were drawn in ArtRage on my tablet PC running Debian Linux. (ArtRage runs under Wine just fine, in case you were wondering.)