First of all I want to thank again and again to @juliakponsford for conceiving and curating this interesting contest as Art Explosion, whose rules are here. I'm sure it's the most important of the Visual Arts contests on the Steem platforms in terms of the power to summon participants, most of them with high quality work, and in terms of prize amounts, very generous. I also want to invite you to getting in to our STEEM - SCHOOL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, of which I will speak a little at the end.

I love Julia very much because she week to week proposes us excellent themes to develop our creativity, so I didn't want to miss the opportunity to introduce myself again, this time in a painful version of me... As I fall down it occurred to me that it could be a good theme

ARTISTICALLY RECYCLING A DISASTROUS FALL

It had rained the night before, which is common and occurs in all cities. What should not be something common is that the mud that the rain brought in enters the entrance of a busy subway station and remains there without anyone removing it for many hours.

But, when it comes to the Caracas Metro, it's not uncommon for this to happen. It is well known, and it is noted daily, that for some time now there has been an escape of personnel, not only the most technically trained but even the one in charge of cleaning. It is a phenomenon that has been occurring not only in the public sector but even in private enterprise. But in the case of the public administration it is an alarming situation since a good part of the workers have resigned and there is no one who takes care of the daily tasks in sectors as important as the Caracas Metro system itself, Corpoelec, the state-owned electric management company, Hidrocapital and other public companies in charge of getting drinking water to homes and, of course, in public companies vital to the Venezuelan economy such as Petróleos de Venezuela, PDVSA, which went from being one of the largest industries in the world dedicated to processing the immense fossil wealth stored in the subsoil to being a failed company that cannot guarantee the supply of gasoline to Venezuelans themselves. And all this human resource leakage is due to the fact that the monthly minimum wage is among the lowest in the world and certainly the lowest in the entire American continent.

In short, to summarize the story, because of the lack of maintenance and my own recklessness and haste to get to work early, because I fell and gave myself, as we say in Venezuela, "un tremendo carajazo", that is, "a really hard fucking blow" in my mouth. After walking around several hospitals where I was not treated for lack of basic medical supplies, I decided to go to the Military Hospital, which, being the center where they treat the privileged Venezuelan military, would surely have the necessary materials... Of course, there was a small problem: I am not, I have not been, and I will never be a soldier... But, I am, I have been, and I will always be a man of theatre... So I know how to put on great shows and it occurred to me that a scandal at the entrance to the military hospital was not convenient for the soldiers... Of course, in Venezuela you never know what might happen, so the risk of being beaten or even arrested existed... I decided to play them all... And well, I managed to get in and be taken care of. Although I had to look for and pay for the X-ray of my teeth...

The best thing is that I have excellent material to make art.

AFTER THE FALL A SELFPORTRAIT... Step by step.

I've always said: I'm not a professional illustrator, but an improvised amateur. So I won't give a great explanation, from a technical point of view, on how I got to the result that I share with you today. I will only briefly describe the steps through which I developed this GIF named After the fall a selfportrait.

It occurred to me that I could use the X-ray image they made of me to rule out a fracture in my teeth and upper jaw... It's a great way to show my deepest intimacy... As you can see, my name is Oswaldo Gonzalez!

Then I looked for an X-ray image of a skull and found this one that I liked very much:
https://mx.depositphotos.com/117543534/stock-photo-x-ray-skull.html

Of course, I had to take advantage of the selfie I made to commemorate such a magna event:

Then I worked the images with the free software FireAlpaca editing the images, applying filters and making a sequence of collages with them. It seemed to me that the surgery lamp was an eye watching me...

With this software I cut the image of my teeth in X-rays...

And I was adding by parts images of the bust in X rays... first the trunk....

Then part of the face...

Finally the complete skull...

Then my external image gradually appeared... That one, the one covered with skin...

This sequence of images were processed with the free software https://giphy.com/ and...

Ready! Now you can make this journey to my beaten and dark inner world...

I think is a good idea to listen After the fall, by Klaus Nomi...