I had an urge recently to do a bit of 3D modeling, something I had done every day for a couple of decades but tapered off when I began my foray into digital abstract art. Abstract art has been a very welcome change, but my love for 3D modeling has never left me. After finishing some other art projects recently and wondering what to do next, I decided to fall back into 3D. Let’s look at the latest project.
The idea began to percolate as I was flipping through my digital photo album and came across pictures I captured in July of 2024 when Denise and I took a day trip to Muenster, SK – in particular, to visit St. Peter’s Cathedral.
St. Peter’s Cathedral – Muenster, SK – Photo by Don Cheke
The cathedral itself isn’t glorious, like the ones one might see in Europe, but I like the design of this one, nonetheless. As for a 3D modeling challenge, it’s no way near the complexity I have reached in my full-time modeling days, but I thought it would be fun and would perhaps be something I could play with while making an abstract art project. I had also pondered creating the model to use as a reference image for a pencil drawing – another interest of mine. More about this further along.
I modeled the cathedral in TurboCAD and applied materials and rendered it in KeyShot. I rendered the scene with a transparent background and later added an abstract background at a very low opacity to add a bit of color. Note that I had only an image or two for reference, so I had to speculate on dimensions as I progressed. You will also note that my model is not 100% accurate, but that was my choice. I left off the rain gutters and downspouts, and I left off some of the small incidentals. I also left off the wheelchair ramp so I could zoom in and have the front of the cathedral fill the canvas.
St. Peter’s Cathedral – Full Render – Modeled & Rendered by Don Cheke
I then chose to render the cathedral again with a new material that KeyShot calls a toon material, meaning cartoon-like, or what CAD users might call a line render with shading. I thought the result was great and would keep me from having to manually draw the cathedral, which I originally thought about doing. As before, the scene was rendered with a transparent background, and I added the same background I mentioned earlier.
St. Peter’s Cathedral – Cartoon Render – Modeled & Rendered by Don Cheke
The next thing I did was to take the line drawing image from above, without the background, and ran a sketch filter on it in my photo editing software – which is meant to create a sketch based on the selected image and do so at the press of a button – automatically as it were. I thought the result was interesting. What do you think?
St. Peter’s Cathedral – Cartoon Render with Sketch Filter – Modeled, Rendered & Edited by Don Cheke
When the three images above were done, I decided that I would bring them into my painting program after I first created an abstract background. Once the background was complete, I stacked the three images and experimented with blend modes to find the most appealing result. Below is what I settled on, thinking it turned out quite well.
St. Peter’s Cathedral Abstract – Created by Don Cheke
For the history buffs, I asked CoPilot to provide a brief history of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Muenster, Saskatchewan.
CoPilot had this to say:
Here’s a brief history of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Muenster, Saskatchewan — a landmark deeply tied to the region’s German-Catholic heritage:
🕍 Origins and Foundation
• Founded in 1903, St. Peter’s Parish began with German-speaking Catholic settlers, many of whom were second-generation immigrants from Minnesota.
• Benedictine monks from Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota arrived to serve the community, establishing a monastery and parish.
🛠️ Construction and Architecture
• The current cathedral was built between 1908 and 1910, led by skilled immigrant carpenters August Wassermann and Theodore Fleskes.
• It features twin towers rising approximately 70 feet and seats over 400 people. The structure is Romanesque with medieval and classical influences.
🎨 Artistic Legacy
• In 1919, renowned German-born artist Count Berthold Imhoff painted the sanctuary with 80 life-sized figures, including saints modeled after local clergy. His work was a gift to Abbot Bruno Doerfler.
🏛️ Cathedral Status and Territorial Abbacy
• In 1921, the church became the cathedral of the newly formed Territorial Abbey of Saint Peter-Muenster, a unique ecclesiastical jurisdiction led by the abbot with bishop-like authority.
• The abbacy covered 50 townships and served over 12,000 Catholics in what was known as St. Peter’s Colony.
📜 Transition and Legacy
• The Territorial Abbey was dissolved in 1998, and the cathedral was absorbed into the Diocese of Saskatoon.
• Though officially a parish church today, it is still affectionately called a cathedral by locals and remains a spiritual and cultural landmark.
Below is a picture I captured on an earlier trip I took with Denise in July of 2009.
St. Peter’s Cathedral Interior – Muenster, SK – Photo by Don Cheke
When Denise and I visited in 2009, the Stations of the Cross were off the main walls of the Cathedral. We found them in a back room, perhaps being cleaned, or restored in some way. They were surprisingly large and well done.
St. Peter’s Cathedral Station 11 – Muenster, SK – Photo by Don Cheke
I hope that you like the results of this project and found the look into this artist’s mind revealing – in a good way, of course.
Happy travels!
Donald B. Cheke – September 27, 2025