Category: Looser Work

WYD Lisbon One-Year Later

16/8/2024

I will endeavour in this personal, reflective piece not to repeat things that I have already written much about before.

LISBON World Youth Day Week started on a Tuesday, 1 August 2023, which makes keeping track of events personally in one’s mind rather difficult. Later on, at times one could be forgiven for the honest mistake of losing, or even gaining, a day on your internal calendar.

Peace, an illustration (2024)

27/7/2024

Illustrated 26 July 2024

It has been a long while since I lasted did a picture for myself or “published” one on this website.
Hopefully this may be the end of the illustrative drought, pax.

PEACE:
Summer daisies,
Bubbles,
Snow-capped mountains,
Gliding swans,
and Bountiful clouds.

Vincent Cavanagh
27 July 2024

One–Knight Comedy

30/3/2024

Surrealism incoming!
Illustrated 30 March 2024

Vincent Cavanagh, 2024

A spotlight on Bishop Stumbers’ short-lived career in stand-up comedy.

Congratulations to anyone who “gets” the cameo appearances on the far side table ;)
With apologies to Messrs Astley and Baker.

Vincent Cavanagh
30 Mar 2024 / Holy Saturday

Happy New Year and all that

1/1/2024

Illustrated 1 January 2023

'Bishop Stumbers: All Nog-ged Out'

Finally putting to paper an idea that's been knocking about in my head since around about Christmas Eve.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to you all.

Vincent Cavanagh
1 Jan 2023

St Andrew Dũng-Lạc, Vietnamese Martyr

25/11/2023

Drawn on 23 November 2023.

St Andrew Dũng-Lạc was a Vietnamese Catholic priest who was martyred under the Nguyễn dynasty in Việt Nam (Vietnam) with his fellow priest and countryman St Peter Phạm Truong Vǎn Thi by beheading.

They were both named among the 117 Vietnamese Martyrs who were canonised by Pope John Paul II on 19 June 1988.

Fuller histories of both St Andrew Dũng-Lạc and St Peter Thi can be found on the Santi e Beati website:
St Andrew Dũng-Lạc
St Peter Phạm Truong Vǎn Thi

The Memorial of St Andrew Dũng-Lạc and his companions, Vietnames martyrs, is on 24 November.

Vincent Cavanagh
25 Nov 2023

What every Pilgrim Artist needs

12/5/2023

Sound advice, in any galaxy 😜
#HitchhikersGuidetotheGalaxy

And here is the process shot of me adding those wise words to the front of this new sketchbook.

Vincent Cavanagh
~12 May 2023

And this is the original from the 1981 BBC adaptation.

A Forgotten Giant of NSW

29/3/2023

Artwork created 29 Mar 2023.

Rather a heavily stylised drawing of a NSWGR D58 class, heavy goods steam locomotive.
None survived the cutter's blow-torch.

Vincent Cavanagh
~ 29 March 2023

And With Your Spirit

18/5/2022

So last fortnight I did something for the first time that I thought I would never do: I made a #MayThe4th cartoon, featuring Bishop Stumbers.

Yeah, I don’t think there are that many Vulcans in Star Wars somehow. (Wry smile.)

It’s been a long time since I’d last put a physical pen to paper. It was also nice that it was a fairly simply concept to draw.
For the red accent I used a Copic marker, and I think it helped to tie the whole picture together. I also adjusted the contrast of the image on my computer before it was read to share.

Yesterday (17 May 2022) I finally got around to editing and uploading to my YouTube Channel the videos I took of the ride on the Puffing Billy Railway that my father and I took on our family holiday back in March 2019. It’s of the return journey from Gembrook to Belgrave in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. Enjoy.

So, until next time, stay safe and God Bless.

~ Vincent Cavanagh, 18 May 2022.

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.

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.

— — — — —
Digital Painting in a limited palette.

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