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 Blog

St Charles Lwanga, Ugandan Martyr

20/7/2023

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Pencilled 17 Jul 2023.
Painted 18 Jul 2023.
Picture
Vincent Cavanagh © 2023
St Charles Lwanga, one of the Ugandan Martyrs.
He was a strong protector of young men from sexual predation and advocate of chastity.

He was martyred at the age of 26 when he refused to renounce his faith in Christ Jesus, in the year 1886.

For a far more in-depth look at St Charles Lwanga than I could ever attempt, read this reflection by Bishop Robert Barron on Word on Fire here.

And for the histories other Martyrs of Uganda, visit the Basilica of the Ugandan Martyrs Catholic Shrine, Namugongo, website here.


Vincent Cavanagh
​20 Jul 2023

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St Augustine Zhao Rong

7/7/2023

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Sketched 29 Jun 2023.
Painted 6 Jul 2023.
Picture
Vincent Cavanagh © 2023
St Augustine Zhao Rong, a former prison guard from Wuchuan who was converted by the testimony of the missionaries and Chinese Christians that he guarded and escorted to trial before his baptism into the faith in 1776.

​After this he became a diocesan priest on 10 May 1781 and went on to proclaim the gospel and life of Jesus Christ to his fellow countrymen in rural areas. He was later captured and tortured, dying in the coldest part of 1815.
​

He and his fellow Chinese martyrs from the period between 1648 to 1930 were canonized by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000.
​

For more details read this article from Society of Saints.


​
Vincent Cavanagh
7 Jul 2023

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Caroline Chisholm (1808 – 1877)

6/3/2023

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Painted 2–4 March 2023.
Picture
Vincent Cavanagh © 2023
Rather than fail admirably at trying to condense the epic life of Mrs Chisholm into a few measly paragraphs, I will direct you instead to the Friends of Caroline Chisholm website for a greater insight to her and her works than I could ever attempt to do justice within the confines of this blog.

Link to the Mrs Chisholm website.
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St Peter Chanel, S.M.

1/3/2023

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Painted 23–24, 26 Feb 2023.
Picture
Vincent Cavanagh © 2023
St Peter Chanel is the Protomartyr of Oceania, and Patron of Wallis and Futuna.
He was a French Marist father and religious superior of seven fellow Marist missionaries sent out to the region, having left France on the 24th of December 1836.

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St Pius X + Our Lady of Confidence

1/3/2023

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Painted 21–22 Feb 2023.
Picture
Vincent Cavanagh © 2023
St Pius X was the 259th Pope and successor to St Peter. He was a vehement opponent of what he called "Modernism" inside the theological circles of the Roman Catholic Church.

Something that the church is still fighting with today, what may be bluntly explained as: trying to convert the church to appease the (fickle) world, rather than converting the world to appease (and please) God the Father.

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Prisoner for the Faith

3/2/2023

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Picture
Vincent Cavanagh © 2023
Venerable François-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận
​

Former Coadjutor Archbishop of Sài Gòn (now Hồ Chí Minh City), imprisoned for his faith and family connections by the communist government of Vietnam for 13 years after the fall of Sài Gòn. He was released in 1988 but kept under house arrest. He became exiled in 1991 when he was allowed to visit Rome but never to return to Vietnam. He died in Rome in 2002, aged 74. On the fifth anniversary of his death his cause for sainthood was begun. He was named Venerable by Pope Francis on 4 May 2017, the first step on the long road to being made a Saint by the Catholic Church.
​
This painting was the fruit of listening to the introduction and homily by the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, for the Solemn Pontifical Funeral Mass of George Cardinal Pell (1941–2023) on 2 Feb 2023.

Vincent Cavanagh ~ 3 February 2023
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All Quiet on the Great Western Front

20/4/2022

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Picture
'Pannier Tank and Diesel Shunter' Vincent Cavanagh © 2022
I have painted in a while, but I did thankfully do a small "just for fun" painting on Good Friday (15 April 2022).
It's little scene, set in either the early hours of the morning or before dusk, containing a generic-looking Great Western Railway Pannier Tank engine opposite a British Railways Class 08 Diesel shunter that appears to be having bit of trouble starting up. Note the fireworks coming out the top of it.

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Okay, so I totally missed July

12/8/2021

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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:
Picture
St Pope Paul VI.

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Year of St Joseph – Part 1

8/4/2021

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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:
Picture
"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)?
Picture
"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.
Picture
"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!
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First Assignment

16/9/2020

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The first assignment for my 3 month mentorship under Giuseppe Castellano was to research the illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé.
He is still alive, and known for loose ink work, real life settings, minimal colour, recognizable but not perfect depictions of people (for example children have light bulb shaped heads and adults have big noses). Then I needed to reference his style in a mock up of a cover for the New Yorker magazine, including the interaction of two characters and a background.
​
This is one of my pages of practice sketches.
Picture
​The next thing was to research covers for the New Yorker magazine. Most of them contained scenes from New York life, or what would be recognized as New York life, or else they were political. At times the spine and mast-head were colours other than black.
 
So I researched New York, things like 20 things only New Yorkers would appreciate, or 10 jokes only New Yorkers will get. I needed to find either a humorous angle or something I am interested in. The stories of YouTube sensations Pizza Rat and Milkshake Squirrel were intriguing.
 
I put together some thumb nail sketches:
Picture
1. Pizza – Rat: Going to the Cinema with Dad.
2. Abbot and Costello on TV with child watching.
3. Father and child on a Ferris Wheel at an amusement park.
4. Child peering over subway platform to see train.
5. Child chasing after parent in front of giant destination board.

Of these thumb nails, Pizza – Rat won. This is a scan of the ink work, below.
Picture
​The next step was to get an idea of colour values digitally before putting any watercolour on.
Picture
​Then came watercolour. This is the raw image below:
Picture
​I then had to clean up the art work and remove/fix mistakes from inking, in Photoshop.
And then add the copied masthead from a previous New Yorker cover, via Google and Photoshop again.
Picture
This final art is shown at a smaller size than actual size. 
​It had been quite a while since I used non-digital media, I had forgotten how nerve wracking it is when there is no room for mistakes.

#IllusDept #mentorship #Sempé
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