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15 March 2026 sketchbook (detail) ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026 First-quarter Blog Digest for 2026. What’s been happening. Website-wise, there are now ‘next-post, last-post’ buttons at the bottom of each World Youth Day Lisbon blog post for ease of navigation through that series. It just took a lot of time, repetition, and wrangling with the Weebly website editor to get it done. Hooray! Current versus possible future CavanaghArt logo mascots ~ Vincent Cavanagh © 2026. Art-wise, I did have a day spent doodling out ideas for Bishop Stumbers cartoons, which was a positive. Most of them were about what said bishop might get involved in on a WYD pilgrimage. We shall see if some of them might get developed beyond their initial ballpoint drafts. Rattling about my brain at the moment is a possibility of re-drawing the CavanaghArt bird logos to better reflect my current style of art. The original set of birdies are well and truly about a decade old at this point, in 2026, and I’m certainly not the same artist I was back then. Whether anything actually happens on this idea, or it just keep rattling around my head, is another matter. Also, after the suggestion of a friend, I have been down the rabbit hole of investigating what it would take to self-produce stickers from my art and my conclusion was that, for me, it would be far more effort than it was worth. The shear amount of equipment, testing of cutting depths, sticker paper stocks, lamination, and software quirks is, to my mind, on a par with near-professional, home coffee-brewing: metric scales, correct dosage of coffee beans, the right grind size, purified water, puck preparation, flow rate, etcetera. I already have enough furores of my own with trying to convince the home printer to print on the paper-card stock I want it to. The last thing I want is to increase the number of machines throwing hissy fits in my face because it’s the wrong phase of the moon when I’m at my wits end racing to print something off for a special occasion the following morning. I’m not ruling out that stickers might happen, just that doing-it-myself is not for me. On the personal front, after 2025, I’m still recovering from burnout. Though it’s not helpful when one continues to get sucked into the temporal blackholes of YouTube (the “new” smoking), be overwhelmed by dehumanising discourse around ‘Artificially Intelligent’ generation of images online, and catching oneself interrogating any creative idea for art that pops up with whether, or not, it passes cost-benefit analysis. Talk about being brain-rinsed into mechanistic thinking, oi vey! It’s all indicative of the fact that there’s been a distinct lack of humour in my life of late. All fret and no play makes for a crabby, frustrated artist. The sensible thing would be to just say, “stuff the lot of it (AI generation) and do it (Art) anyway!” without expectation for it to — ahem — “perform well.” 2026 Lunar New Year celebrations. (Photo: Vincent Cavanagh © 2026) Thankfully, there have been some diversions in the form of meeting up with WYD friends at a Lunar New Year’s celebration, birthday party invites, wandering around the odd bookshop or two, colouring projects for others, and the odd heritage train ride here and there. A main issue for me is a lack of motivation and sufficient reason for me to overcome lethargy and get outside, physically and mentally. ■ Seoul IssuesSouth Korean flag waving on the evening of the WYD Lisbon Vigil. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) I know that one should “never say never”, but with where I’m at right now I don’t see myself going to Korea in 2027 for World Youth Day Seoul. Don’t get me wrong, I do have strong emotions towards the next WYD, and more so the friendships born of the last one, but that doesn’t out-weigh knowing first-hand what the shear toll a WYD pilgrimage can be on a person and how much it truly demands of them. Which isn’t anything I’m willing to put myself through again—especially if it’s not what God intends me to do. At the end of the day, it’s all in His hands, not mine. ■ 2026 Q1 Blog posts8 Jan 2026 – Year in Review: 2025. 18 Feb 2026 – First new bit of art that I have made in a long while. 27 Feb 2026 – Back to Loftus for the annual Tramway Festival. 3 Mar 2026 – Finally posting about the farewell V Set trip to Kiama last year. ■ Parting NotesOn a more positive note, I’ll leave you readers with this Part 2 video by Daniel Folta detailing his process of depicting the Nativity in oil paint. For myself, it is a calm and meditative experience watch him bring his painting to life.
■ What is a “Blog Digest”?It’s me trying something different. To present a Quarterly “quick guide” to the blog posts that I’ve made in the preceding three months, as well as sharing any articles of YouTube videos that I’ve found interesting. Like a regular digest: what’s happened, what did you miss, I found this interesting, and such like. Also, it’s meant to be something manageable for myself to accomplish and not be something so huge that I dread even thinking about it and just end up leaving it languishing in the dustbin. Here’s lookin’ at you, RANDOM Things. ■ 2025 Q4 Blog posts31 Oct 2025 – A new Bishop comic for All Hallows’ Eve. 1 Dec 2025 – Announcing my 2026 Calendar as being ready to order. ■ Parting NotesAnd yes, I think that there will be a Year In-Review: 2025 blog post uploaded sometime in January 2026, but I don’t expect it to be much more than a brief recap of the year. He writes. I’ll leave you readers with this video about the history of the original Star Wars (1977) posters by Paper and Light. Until next time, Merry Christmas everyone! ( ‘Tis a Season! ) Vincent Cavanagh 29 December 2025 |
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