A new exhibition and a new agent

You may have realised that I have not been blogging here since the end of 2019; when all of Australia seemed to be on fire. I was so traumatised by what I could see was happening, so many lives lost; people and animals. Then we had Covid. Rather than dwelling on these sad events and all the other weather events that have caused so much heartache, my focus is on helping us to make our lives more beautiful and to help to promote the conservation of our environment and nature.

I now have an art licensing agent, Suzanne Cruise Creative Services. If you are looking for art for your products, Cruise Creative have a platform I am so happy to announce that I am now represented by Suzanne Cruise Creative Services. It has been a journey to get to this point since having left teaching behind and learning about surface pattern design and art licensing. It was always my dream to make illustration my focus rather than graphic design and have an agent to work with so this is a dream coming true for me. Teaching Visual Communication and Illustration was a joy and I often felt so fortunate to be paid to teach and work with my lovely students but it also meant that I was doing less of my own work and although the University kept stating that they were all about staff having a good work/life balance, that was not how I was finding things in the end. Now I get to create every day; to design and illustrate surface patterns for textiles, wallpaper, greeting cards and home decor products. I keep a list of stockists and outlets for my designs and art on my Shop page on my website and I will keep you updated here of any new events or offers here. I will be summarising the contents and sending it out as a newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

Please let me know how I can help you. I have been considering mentoring and a Skillshare class and would love to know if there is something I can cover that would suit you.

During the last fortnight, I took part in an exhibition called “It’s all in the Detail”, in a local gallery, Cstudios Art Gallery. The exhibition focus was Natural History and Illustration exhibition so I got to exhibit with some ex-students and colleagues from the Natural History Illustration degree, which I had also taught on.

• I shall be at Lambton Park for the next Hunter Arts Network Art Bazaar on the 26th March 2023 and I will be on the NCEATA stand with my tea towels, greeting cards and some other interesting items. I will add the stand number and location in my social media and also here.

GROW - an Illustrators Australia exhibition

I am a member of Illustrators Australia and every year we have a group exhibition. This year’s exhibition is called GROW, to celebrate the group being in existence for 30 years. It is a group for illustrators run by it’s members. The exhibition is a 9x5 Exhibition and it has been held at the Victorian Artist’s Society and it pays homage to the Heidelberg School's famous paintings on little wooden cigar boxes.

My work was printed onto wood by @printonwood.

It is an amazing exhibition which opened last week, so if you’re in Melbourne, it’s a great exhibition to visit.

This exhibition is open daily in the Hammond Gallery until Monday 16 December at 4pm at the Hammond Hall, The Victorian Artist’s Society, 430 Albert Street, East Melbourne.

What do I love about Illustration?

Recently I was asked to answer some questions about what I loved about illustration. I have never really given this much thought. I knew the benefits but for me it was something I was driven to do.

Here are the questions and answers.

What do you love about illustrating?

Drawing or illustrating (to communicate ideas visually) has been something that I have always done for as long as I can remember; it has been and as essential as breathing. This may have started when I would have to entertain myself while my Mother was working long hours to make a living.

There are many reasons I love to illustrate: it helps to entertain me; create something beautiful from nothing, aside from some art materials; it allows me to create my own worlds filled with colour, light and pattern; to be able to create the illusion of a three dimensional world on a flat surface; it allows me to produce beautiful things that I can share; it is meditative and allows me to forget about time and totally immerse myself in creating something new; it allows me to communicate ideas more effectively than verbal or textual communication can; and it makes me more observant of the details in the world around me so that I might include some of these in my work, and hopefully, make others aware of the beautiful details around us that they might normally overlook.

What inspires you to create?

All of the points I have mentioned above and I have always been a fan of still life and all that it entails: food, flowers, nature and pattern so I love to create my own versions of still life. The works of other artists and architects through history, nature and fashion also inspires me.

How long have you been illustrating and designing why have you continued?

I have been illustrating and designing as a job for just over 30 years. My schoolbooks were always filled with illustrations and carefully rendered headings wherever possible, so the career path I should take was easy to see, although it takes reflecting on the past to realise this.

I trained as a Graphic Designer but I actually really wanted to be an illustrator at a time when illustration courses were not as readily available as they are now. After a period in industry, I ended up teaching Visual Communication at The University of Newcastle for almost 25 years, which included the teaching of drawing and illustration.

After leaving teaching, I decided that I would focus more on my own illustration, as it was still my passion. The only thing that has changed is that I use paint most of the time and my years of constant practice and learning have finally made me feel more confident of my abilities. I now enjoy the process and all that is involved even more.

Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize, 2019

The Newcastle Foundation Art Prize is an acquisitive prize, with the winner receiving $10,000 and it is dedicated specifically to local Newcastle artists set up by the Newcastle Club and Newcastle Art Space.. This is my second attempt with my last effort in the first year of the prize. I did not even get picked to be hung in the exhibition.

I entered the Newcastle Club Foundation Art Prize this year as the brief stated that it had to be based on Hunter Valley flora and fauna with a theme of Cornucopia, with reference to still life and natural history so the brief is better suited to what I normally create. I have included my first very rough sketches which were quite small so that you can see what I had in mind before I did a lot of research into what the actual flora and fauna is for the Hunter Valley. I found that there are no big showy flowers like Waratahs and Proteas, but I do love the flowers that I did end up with so I just had to adjust my thinking as to how I was going to fill the floral part of my plan. Flannel flowers keep appearing in my works and they are such beautiful flowers so I expect to use them more. The flowers that appear in the arrangement are Bottlebrush, Wattle, Banksias, Flowering Gum, Wax Flowers (pink flowers) and Broadleaf Drumsticks (the yellow flower). In the final work I made my vase into a “horn of plenty” and the butterflies hark back to the work of Harriet and Helena Scott and their scientific illustrations of moths, butterflies and some flora while also including a well known Hunter Valley landmark. The birds in the painting clockwise from the top left are: Noisy Miner, Yellow Tailed Black cockatoo, Rainbow Lorikeet and a Regent Honeyeater.

I did not get the prize but the work is part of a beautiful exhibition where my work is on exhibit with other well known and respected, local artists. The work is on view until the 22nd September at Newcastle ArtSpace (91 Chinchen Street, Tighes Hill, from 12-4pm) as part of a beautiful exhibition and it is for sale. It measures 778 x 778 mms.

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Hunter Bouquet by Daniela Glassop ©2019

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Work in progress for my Hunter Bouquet painting.

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Hunter Bouquet thumbnail sketch

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Visual reference

Progress in my 100 day project

During my 100 day project this year I did make a point on making collections of work rather than many disparate elements; I tried some different ways of creating new illustrations and I now feel more comfortable working digitally for entire illustrations where it used to not feel like a natural way for me to work. The approach to groupings seems to have paid off as I was contacted by the Nuovo Group as they were interested in taking many of my illustrations to print for greeting cards. Nuovo group and the greeting cards are currently on display at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre until tomorrow. Some of the greeting cards were photographed for me by Kirsten Katz who happened to be in Melbourne last weekend and visited the show (see below).

The 100 day project is a great experience and I have enjoyed the opportunity to experiment. If you would like to do a 100 day project, it is easier to do if you have others joining you, but it is about setting yourself a project or intention and then share on social media so that you get others involved and following along even if you can’t post every day.

Happy April and my latest 100 day challenge →

I hope you all had a great start to the new year. quite a few things have taken place since my last post which I will post about in other posts.

I am taking part in another #the100dayproject as a 100 day project is a great way to choose a project and focus on that for 100 days and it’s more fun doing so with others.For my project, I am also joining @victoriajohnsondesign and focusing on illustrating #birdsbutterfliesandblooms with my own angle, #playingwithtechniques. There are some approaches to mark making that I would like to experiment with and this project is ideal for that type of experimentation.

You can follow along on my business account https://www.facebook.com/DanielaGlassop/ or my Instagram https://www.instagram.com/danielaglassop/

It’s not too late to join in with your own project and hashtag.