Cavanagh Art - Blog

Okay, so I totally missed July

12/8/2021

For 2 reasons: 1) I've been preoccupied editing our June Holiday videos and; 2) I totally forgot about the website. Apologies.

Okay so let's start with the artwork then; which requires us going back to May:

St Pope Paul VI.

First off is this watercolour of Saint Pope Paul the Sixth that I did as a Memorial Card for a friend's Priestly Ordination at the end of May this year (2021).

Pentecost 2021.

Then we skip back a week, or so, to Pentecost 2021 for this quick, unplanned sketchbook drawing. I'd been pulling my hair out earlier struggling to do something for Pentecost digitally and it wasn't working out, and then just before, say, 10 or 11 o'clock that night I made this with a black, blue and red ballpoint pens with text highlighters as well. You don't always need fancy stuff to make art.

St Charbel Makhlouf.

And now come to the missing blog month of July with this watercolour of St Charbel Makhlouf, Maronite monk and priest, and a patron of Lebanon.

At the moment I don't know if, or how long, this "pure watercolour" (ie, no ink outlines or such) style is going to stay. I think, on reflection, that it came about for 2 reasons: 1) during a conversation with a family friend whose eyesight is not what it once was, I realised that some of my more ink-heavy pictures (such as St Joseph and the infant Jesus) had no real clarity.

St Joseph and the infant Jesus (2020).

I knew what I was looking at, but someone with bad eyesight couldn't untangle the mess of black ink from the sometimes equally dark watercolours; and 2) I'd been watching some watercolour demonstrations on Youtube (link here) and there was one where the instructor painted an picture of Santa Claus, for a Christmas Card, in with just Red, Yellow Ochre and, I think, Payne's Grey or Black. So that was an added impetus to change my style: I wanted to also try painting a face with just watercolour. And that is the condensed set of reasons why I painted Paul VI in watercolour (see above).

Now as I mentioned earlier in this post, I've been, and I am still working, on editing and uploading our June Holiday to South Australia videos to Youtube. If you want to see where we went, I've put the first (in no way chronological) video at the bottom of this blog post. As of 12 July 2021, 12:49pm, there are 3 South Australia videos up on my Youtube channel (link here), with much more to come.

So until next time (barring me forgetting again!) God bless and stay safe.

June Update — CG Cookie & #Collab2021

10/6/2021

First of all let me apologise for the brevity of this post, my main aim is just to have a blog post for the Month of June posted in June.
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So at the start of April this year (2021) I decide to join and participate in CG Cookie's Collab2021 (Collaboration 2021) project to turn a concept painting into a 3D scene. To see what we where working from click here. CG Cookie is an online learning community devoted to teaching Blender and other related 3D concepts.

The asset that I worked on way the spice cart, which you see the video below:

Spice Cart (Still frame).

Unicycle-riding owl holding a concrete umbrella.

This delightful chap (since named Omar Owlson) is the product of a fellow Collab2021 participant's random comment, about halfway thru April, sparking my imagination and I promptly put this together in Adobe Photoshop. And no I haven't changed my signature, that's just my CG Cookie Forum name in the bottom left corner. My CG Cookie portfolio can be found here.

After Collab2021 officially ended after April there continues to be a community-centred Collab2021 Interior Team that's only starting to really get up some steam this June after a fallow period during May. Which is when I made these two following concepts below:

Owl-themed tankard and candlestick concepts (unofficial).

The above image of Omar guarding a bridge in the rain is another in a series of those random comment that ignited my mind, and also possibly contributed my post-Collab "blahs". Over stimulation combined with endorphins and earlier mornings to catch live-streams from the U.S. also didn't help much either.

After recovering a bit from the "blahs" I took on the challenge of turning the Owl-themed candlestick, that I'd concepted before, and turn it into 3D for the Collab Interior. Basically because it was smaller (not necessarily easier) and that nobody else had seemed to taken an interest in doing it themselves.

Another Collab member has actually taken on the challenge of turning Omar into a 3D object, which can be found here. (Click on the Replies under the spice jars post to see the first version and scroll on from their.)

OpenGL turnaround.

Final Image (Beauty shot).

Above the final beauty shot of the candlestick is the OpenGL turnaround (4 views) of it fully textured and painted without the additional lighting in the beauty shot.
I think that it's come up rather well, considering all minor tweaks that I went through today just so that I could be done with it.

So until next time, God bless and stay safe.

A Quick Digital Picture

4/5/2021

Blossom – Tram Scene

Just something I put together tonight. It took me about an hour, an hour-and-a-half, maybe? I didn't really bother to time how long I spent on it.

Recently I had a chance to ride on the Sydney Light Rail network to Randwick for the funeral of a family friend, so perhaps that is what inspired this picture. The telephone box is based on a preserved example at the Sydney Tramway Museum at Loftus. Other than those two things I've also had a few stray thoughts about Japanese paintings rattling around in my head. That about it really.

I have ideas of maybe making this into a 3D animation, but I don't know if it isn't anything more than just a pipedream at the moment.

Stay safe and God bless.

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Digital Painting in a limited palette.

Year of St Joseph - Part 3

1/5/2021

Year of St Joseph: Birth of Jesus.

Looking back on this picture as I'm trying to write a blog post for it, I'm stuck by how (without any forethought or planning) Joseph and Mary look very, very alike to a recently married couple I know. Funny how the subconscious works, eh?

Anyhow, the 1st of May is dedicated to St Joseph the Worker, so how do I commemorate this fact? I paint the Birth of Jesus in the cave/stable.
Specifically I had in my mind how Joseph must have been after the birth: dazed and confused, in a sea of emotions.
"Alright God, now what am I supposed to do?"
And there before him is Mary, totally ensconced in the new life sitting in her arms. She is a total rock of calm amongst the swimming tide of emotions overtaking Joseph as he tries unconsciously to sit down somewhere amongst the animals, inside that cave, on that awesome, and holy, night.

A happy month and feast of St Joseph to you all. Even if it's via Nazareth.

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Digital painting, based on a rough pen sketch.

Late Night Sketching

20/4/2021

Lately I've been participating in an online tuition course for Blender 3D, which has been a good if somewhat challenging experience. The challenging part being trying to work in a group with many other students in multiple different time zones (and the associated late nights that come with it), but I'll talk about that more in a later post. Sometime in May. Hopefully.

Below is the sketch that I made last night to release some of my creative frustrations:

Christ Pantocrator (2021).

I just needed to do something religious to make up for my recent lack of any such artworks.
The original Christ Pantocrator (roughly translated as "All-Mighty" in Greek), that is the inspiration of this image, is one of the first icons depicting Jesus in early history of the Church, and remains to this day a very important image in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
It depicts the two natures of Christ, being both fully God and fully human, through the different sides of His face.

Below are the mirrored composites of the left and right sides of my rough sketch:

Pantocrator Blessing, Mirrored.

Pantocrator Gospels, Mirrored.

Honestly, I had no real plan about how to mirror this image, I just had the vaguest of recollections of what a Pantocrator Icon should look like and I went from there. So I sketched in out with blue ballpoint pen and went over it with a water-based black marker, and added colour with text highlighters. In hindsight I really should've either scanned or at least taken a photo of the under drawing, but I decide to let it go and just keep on drawing with the black marker.

The one real difference between this sketch and the Icon it's based on, is that the real Pantocrator doesn't have the wounds of Christ in it, as far as I know.

So, until the muse next takes me or I need another outlet to create, God bless and stay safe.

Year of St Joseph - Part 2

19/4/2021

Continuing with St Joseph, here are the 2 most recent images that I have done. Both of them where created with Copic alcohol-markers and water-based pens, with pencil under drawings.

"Most Chaste Heart of St Joseph." This one was made on the first Wednesday of March (2021), because every first Wednesday of the month is dedicated to St Joseph. This was an opportunity for me to do the Chaste Heart of St Joseph justice as I'd only previously done a very small version for CATHOLinktober, Day 19, "Chaste Heart of St Joseph". It was also a chance to try out some Bristol Pad paper that I'd bought earlier.

"Reunion." Showing the reunion of St Joseph with Jesus after the crucifixion and before the resurrection. This was painted in honour of the feast day of St Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin (March 19), after having the haunting last few words from the poem Limbo by Sister Mary Ada running through my head that day.

Here are the last 2 stanzas from that poem:

And there He was
Splendid as the morning sun and fair
As only God is fair.
And they, confused with joy,
Knelt to adore
Seeing that he wore
Five crimson stars
He never had before.

No canticle at all was sung.
None toned a psalm, or raised a greeting song.
A silent man alone
Of all that throng
Found tongue --
Not any other.
Close to His heart
When the embrace was done,
Old Jospeh said,
"How is Your Mother,
How is Your Mother, Son?"

Until next time, God bless.

Year of St Joseph – Part 1

8/4/2021

Back in December 2020 Pope Francis proclaimed a Year of St Joseph (8 Dec 2020 – 8 Dec 2021) for the whole Catholic Church.
More information about it can be found here, and about prayer to St Joseph here.

Below are the first 3 images of St Joseph that I painted in the Year of St Joseph proper:

"St Joseph and the infant Jesus." The starting point for this image was the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1, Verse 20; which was one of the prompts from the #Adventus202One art challenge during Advent 2020.
This image in not exactly of the moment described in Matthew's Gospel, but rather of a moment after Jesus' birth when St Joseph fell in love/accepted Jesus as his son for the 2nd or 3rd time.
Also the main inspiration for this image was the idea: if St Joseph had a beard before Jesus was born, how much of it would have been left after Jesus' toddler year (ie. pulling part of Joseph's beard out)?

"The Holy Innocents/The Flight into Egypt." This image was also another inspiration from #Adventus202One, this time being close to the scripture reference: Matthew, Chapter 2, Verse 13–15.
The inspiration for this was thinking about how the recently departed Holy Innocents may have processed with the Holy Family in their flight into Egypt from Herod's persecution, all under the protection St Michael the Archangel.

I just sketched this one rather quickly on some coloured paper and inked it with a calligraphy marker and text highlighters, because I just wanted to get it done and I didn't care how I got it done.
I'd been getting sick of doing so many watercolour pictures in a row and I wanted a break from that medium.

"St Joseph, Protector of the Holy Family." The title for this one basically explains all there is to this picture. Showing St Joseph as the Protector and Shield surround the Jesus and Mary.
Although I must not forget to acknowledge and appreciate @awememento's influence upon this particular painting of St Joseph and the Holy Family.
And her Etsy page can be found here.

Until next time, Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from Bishop Stumbers (Audio)

3/4/2021

Over a period of 37 days and multiple attempts here at last is my first 3D animation in Blender 3D with the assistance of Bishop Stumbers. Admittedly I didn't think his voice was going to be so deep, such is life.

Below is a little gallery of Bishop Stumbers focusing on different aspects of the model. Enjoy!

stumbers: Ash Wednesday, covid-style

17/2/2021

Above is my most recent Bishop Stumbers cartoon, which I finished and posted yesterday (Feb 16).

The idea for this picture began to come together in the previous fortnight over conversations about the new guidelines from the Vatican on how to distribute the ashes for Ash Wednesday during a pandemic (ie. sprinkling the ash on top of peoples' head rather than making a sign of the cross on peoples' foreheads) in a note published on January the 12th (link here).

Among the ideas discussed in those conversations was the fact that some of the more widely recycled memes about Ash Wednesday and the wide variety of cross placed upon the heads of Catholics would be no long applicable under the new guidelines, if anyone thought to think of it that way of course.
And so was born Stumbers' ponderance upon the collect of memes now made irrelevant, and somewhat historical, by the Vatican's new guidelines.

Hopefully next time I can get back to clearing the backlog of blog posts.
Until then, God Bless.

What happened after inktober

3/2/2021

First off I must warn you that this is hardly going to be either a concise or chronologically correct catch-up of all my artwork from the end of October, 2020.

Well, with that brief explainer out of the way here is (below) the final painting from my #CATHOLinktober (2020).

"Title of the Blessed Virgin Mary" was the 31st and last prompt of the CATHOLinktober challenge. As it turned out I wasn't the only artist participating who chose to paint "Our Lady, Star of the Sea".
Before asking God's intercession and throwing a Miraculous Medal, I had no idea which Title of the Blessed Virgin to paint. As such was rather stressed out trying to figure out what the final picture was going to be, but God did proved us an answer.

After I had finished CATHOLinktober, I was commissioned to do a painting of "Our Lady of Guadalupe" for the iWitness 2020 Conference,, in a style similar to what I done previously with "Our Lady, Star of the Sea".

"Our Lady of Guadalupe" is the patron for the iWitness Conference which happens starts on the Thursday before the Third Sunday of Advent, and finishes on that same sunday. I had attended previously attended the 2019 Conference, which had been my first iWitness. During the whole of 2020, the thought of meeting up with previous friends and known face at iWitness had been one of the few lights of hope during the year, and I along with everyone who went to iWitness, as well as the organising team were relieved when it was able to happen under NSW restrictions. Thank you God!

In the above gallery are my photos of the 2020 iWitness Booklet I took when I got home on Guadete (Rose Candle) Sunday.

The iWitness Conference began as a grass-roots way for Catholic youth of Sydney and beyond to keep alive and renew their faith in God and grow deeper in the traditions of the Catholic Church in the afterglow of World Youth Day 2008, Sydney, Australia. It is run by an amazing team of dedicated Catholic youth for the youth, it has been held (as far as I am aware) every year since 2008, and have staked out the 4 days before and including the 3rd Sunday of Advent as their usual set dates. Together they bring in a variety of Catholic speakers to talk on a variety of themes centered around the main theme of that particular year. Such notable speakers have included: Archbishop of Hobart, Julien Porteous; Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Richard Umbers; Robert Haddad; Monica Doumit; and many other known and lesser known speakers, priests, missionaries, religious orders and many more.

To God be all the glory!