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.

A collage of my illustrations put together by Cruise Creative to promote my becoming part of their group of artists.


Teatowels and Floral Abundance 2 painting by Daniela Glassop

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.

Where did November go?

After taking part in two illustration challenges, one after the other, I think I had run out of puff with posting daily. I ended up using some of the month doing some research relating to style and the direction I want to go which is just building on a love that I already had with the patterning, textures and trying to be more economical with my use of colour in an attempt to make my work more interesting. I have been a fan of Andy Warhol’s and Mary Blair’s commercial illustrations for a long time, and when I left school my intention was to be a commercial artist/illustrator but got side tracked by learning about graphic design, which has been extremely helpful as it has developed my visual language, taught me to treat design problems as a designer, weighing up objectives and budgets to work out the best solution, taught me the intricacies of preparing art for print and then later, online use; all of these skills I use daily in my work. I ended up participating in the Mid-Century Masterclass, with Dustin Lee from Retro Supply and Brad Woodward from Brave the Woods. It was an excellent masterclass that ran across two sessions with a group of enthusiastic illustrators and a great swag of brushes and textures to play with. I think that it is crucial to keep learning and developing my skills, and the class was great fun.

November was also all about making my designed fabrics into tea towels and preparing for the Hunter Arts Network’s Art Bazaar which took place mid November. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some fans of my work and to see what offerings that they would like to see next.

I also created a new wallpaper design for the large scale black and white challenge run by Spoonflower. I ended up joining in as I already had the start of a design as I had been working on a new fibre art work also following a black and white theme, which was based on the bird families that frequent my garden who also tend to be black and white. We have magpies, peewees or magpie larks, butcher birds and the occasional visit by a young cockatoo. The fibre art will be on display at Timeless Textiles gallery as part of a group NCEATA (Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Fibre Artists), which will be on view from the 23rd December to 13th January, with the official opening night, on the 3rd January, 2019. Timeless textiles is located at 90 Hunter Street, Newcastle East. The wallpaper is available from my Spoonflower and Roostery shops and is called ‘Visitors to my Garden‘.

Amongst all of this I did design some greeting cards and put the wheels in motion to set up an Etsy shop. The collectable linen and cotton blend tea towels with my illustrations on them that were available at the Art Bazaar are now available from my Etsy shop. The shop is called DanielaGlassopStudio (an Etsy convention to not have spaces in the name) and it can be found via the menu in my web site and via this link: DanielaGlassopStudio My intention is to keep carrying my illustrated tea towels as they are a great way to display art that is less fragile and art that can be seen and used daily and to add gicleè prints taken from my illustrations, greeting cards, stickers and small canvas paintings.

I am also currently participating in Victoria Johnson’s online course, Create Christmas so that I can add more Christmas designs to my offerings and it is helpful to get someone else’s perspective on how to approach any kind of problem. Victoria’s prompts, colour schemes and trend boards are always inspiring.

As I have been so busy setting all of this up that I have not yet got around to sending out a newsletter. My plan is to have a break and a family holiday in January and start afresh towards the end of January, when school goes back in NSW, Australia. The newsletter will give details as to what will be coming up next year so that you get first dibs, and info about things I think you might like. I am hoping to mix it up to keep it interesting.

Hoping that all your Christmas preparations and time with your families and friends is wonderful and revives you for another great year.

My CB Inktober

I took part in a different challenge in October alongside my regular work.

During the month of October, many artists participate in Inktober, a personal project that had been set up by Mr Jake Parker which has grown with each year since it’s inception in 2009. The basic premise for it is to do an ink drawing each day for an entire month. You can read more about it here: https://inktober.com/

This will be my third year and instead of doing self-directed drawings I decided to follow along with the prompts and suggestions presented by Lisa Congdon in her “Inktober Daily Challenge: 31 Days of Drawing and Painting with Ink”, which you can still follow if you are keen on brushing up your skills with ink. I was usually limiting myself to black and white ink lately but Lisa’s lessons included using coloured inks; to overlay them and mix them. I had so much fun with it and loved the results so I will be using ink more than I already am. Below are some of the works I produced for #CBInktober.

It is by taking part in these daily practices and challenges that we can extend ourselves and out art practise.

My September challenge

If you have been following my social media, you will have noticed that I have been creating some miniature black and white drawings based on the theme of vintage toys. The #drawingadaychallenge has been inspired by the work of John Vernon Lord and promoted by the House of Illustration (https://www.qbcentre.org.uk/).

A drawing must be made every day during September and they must measure a one inch square are the limitations of the challenge. As I have been late to the challenge and doing two drawings each day and sticking with black and white as during 2016, John Vernon Lord did a drawing for every day of the year and used pen and ink on paper. I have been a fan of small square illustrations as they also remind me of spot illustrations that were often engraved during the early days of printing. It is also a good lead up for Inktober, another drawing challenge for the month of October. My work has been included in the House of Illustration blog along with other work created for the challenge.

The grid of vintage toy illustrations is now available on clothing, notebooks and bag in my Redbubble store; https://www.redbubble.com/people/danielaglassop/shop?asc=u

Clown and Teddy-Daniela Glassop.JPEG
The entire collection.

The entire collection.

My Spoonflower calendar tea towel design for 2019

Every year I like to produce at least one tea towel design with a calendar. I love beautiful textiles in my home and the calendar option seems to be a very popular for gifts around Christmas time. I will also offer a version without the calendar and I am thinking of offering the painted illustration as an art quality (giclee) print.

The illustration is based on the Chinoiserie style and includes Australian native birds and some native Australian flora as well and was hand painted with a watercolour wash and then gouache was used over the top of the wash.  I have placed the calendar at the top of the design so that the illustration shows when you hang your tea towel.

The birds on the calendar are from bottom left; Spotted Parladote, Purple Crowned Fairy Wren (on the blue bird house),  White Plumed Honeyeater above, centre and the bird on the green bird house is a Chestnut Rumped Heath Wren. The native flowers that have been included are Black Wattle, Flannel Flowers, Pincushion Hakea and the pink flowers have been inspired by some simple roses at the Botanical Gardens, Mount Tambourine, Queensland, Australia.

The tea towel will be available from my Spoonflower shop as fabric, which you can cut and sew yourself.  Linen cotton canvas is good for tea towels, and you'll need one fat quarter for one tea towel. If you would like to be notified when the design or stitched tea towels are available, please sign up for the newsletter so I can keep you informed.

SpoonflowerTeatowelCloseup_DanielGlassop.jpg