Due to the constant blackouts here in the area of Venezuela where I live, our modem to connect to the Internet was damaged. That's why I don't frequent the platform much. However, here I am once, sharing my art in the wonderful...

Art Explosion 74/ Theme DARK!

I begin by thanking again @juliakponsford for conceiving and curating this interesting contest as Art Explosion, whose bases are here. In my opinion this is the most important of the Visual Arts contests in the whole Steemit platform in terms of the power to convene participants, most of whom participate with high quality work and which has very generous prizes.

The theme of this, week 74, is DARK, and being such a SUGERENT content lends itself to participate with anything, even with very conventional things hehe. Fearing not to find a good idea that was up to the topic and without knowing very well what to do, I was looking for suggestions in my digital library when suddenly I stumbled upon a good example of Dark Literature of great quality, a short story by the brilliant Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986).

The story of a dagger stored in a desk drawer immediately reminded me that I had taken a series of photos of a knife, a big kitchen knife. Imagining what knives, daggers, swords and other knives dream made me think of making a series of digital artworks with this theme.... This one, with which I am participating today, is one of them.

But let me share the story with you. It is very short and I assure you that you will like it:

The dagger.

In a drawer there is a dagger. It was forged in Toledo at the end of the last century; Luis Melián Lafinur gave it to my father, who brought it from Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego once held it in his hand.

Those who see him have to play with him for a while; one notices that they have been looking for him for a long time; the hand rushes to squeeze the handle that waits for him; the obedient and powerful blade plays with precision in the sheath.

The dagger wants something else. It is more than a structure made of metals; men thought of it and formed it for a very precise purpose; it is, in some eternal way, the dagger that last night killed a man in Tacuarembó and the daggers that killed Caesar. He wants to kill, he wants to shed sudden blood.

In a desk drawer, between erasers and letters, the dagger endlessly dreams of its simple tiger dream, and the hand is animated when it rules because the metal is animated, the metal that senses in each contact the murderer for whom men created it.

Sometimes I feel sorry for him. So much hardness, so much faith, so peaceful or innocent arrogance, and the years pass, useless.

Jorge Luis Borges.

Source

MIDNIGHT DREAM OF A KNIFE: Piranhas flow. - Step by step.

As I said, I'm not a professional illustrator but an improvised amateur. So I won't give a great explanation, technically speaking, on how I got to the result that I share with you today. I will only briefly describe the steps through which I arrived at the final finish of my Digital Installation:

I did this little exercise of artistic exploration using this resources:

1.- A photo of a serie of a knife placed on a cooking plate taken in the kitchen of one of my sisters with my obsolete Samsung phone:

2.- A Demo of the PaintTool SAI Ver.1 software, taking advantage of the 31-day free trial period offered by its creators. I think it's a good drawing program, with quite a few tools that have allowed me to explore various options and create different types of works of art:

3.- And the tools to make an animation that offers free of charge the page https://www.GIPHY.net/ with which I edited the images and turned them into the GIF that I share with you at the beginning of this Post.