On the occasion of starting a new year in #steemit, in which I hope to cease the constant blackouts, Internet failures and all other serious problems that affect my #venezuela, here I am--

With the intention of celebrating such an important date for my evolution in Steemit I wanted to thank @juliakponsford for conceiving and curating this interesting contest as Art Explosion, whose bases 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 announce the creation of the STEEM - SCHOOL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, of which I will speak a little at the end.

Due to problems with the connection I found out a little late of this week's call but living in a country that appears in the world ranking of nations with more acts of violence I did not want to stop developing some work related to such a deep and human theme as DEATH.

Once again I resorted to the trick of rescuing an old artwork, this time a pencil drawing that I made at the end of the 90s and that was tossed, along with other artistic works and other things of mine, in the basement of my mother's house. I thought it was a good idea to recover it since it is made to participate in the contest because it is very related to the theme of this week. Originally the drawing had no name but it occurred to me to call it Death is a Game.

DEATH IS A PLAY... STEP BY STEP

As you 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 I share with you today. I will only briefly describe the steps through which I arrived at the final finish of this Digital Restoration.

Here is the photo I took when I found the old drawing. Given the state of the paper, I preferred to continue the process digitally.

As a starting point I processed the image of a photo I took when I found my old drawing in the basement of the house. I did that with a photo editor that Microsoft left installed on my computer. With it I trimmed and edited it to improve its appearance.

Then I opened it and edited it with FireAlpaca, with this free software I applied filters to revive its color. I also completed the corners so that the figure was rectangular.

Next, I used several tools, such as airbrushes, pencils and brushes to give a better finish to the original drawing. That's how I decided to give it color, albeit in a subtle way. I wanted to give the image a Vintage and rather candid look. Something like the illustrations brought by the magazines distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Later I dedicated myself to correcting the details using very fine pencils and brushes. With the tools Airbrush and Particles I gave an almost cosmic aspect to the background of the drawing.

Finally I made some changes to the image of the girl. That's how the drawing ended with the final finish of the artwork which is HERE:

Soon, very soon I will be opening the doors of the STEEM-SCHOOL OF CONTEMPORARY ART... A space for you and the rest of #artexplosion's friends and the entire Steem community to explore the frontiers of what has been art from the 20th century to the disturbing present. With it I hope you will be motivated to develop new and creative projects within the many alternatives offered by the new paths of art so that you can have a greater number of alternatives when creating post that are attractive. This way you will be able to get more votes and increase your followers.