Sarah McMenemy illustrates a relaxing stay for Cottonmill Spa.

Sarah McMenemy has created illustrations for luxury spa Cottonmill, featured across a range of promotional and branding materials, elevating the brochures with beautiful wrap around covers, and used heavily across the website and other promotional material.

Commissioned by high end branding agency Luxury Branding, Sarah has created quirky, attractive and evocative illustrations that are both fun and reminiscent of the relaxing atmosphere of the spa. Launched in anticipation of the opening date, Sarah worked from architectural renderings to help create her take on the space, combining the references with her own imagined scenes of a spa day.

Obviously, first hand research was needed, so Sarah took a trip to Sopwell House (the hotel that houses Cottonmill Spa), soaking up the atmosphere of the hotel for inspiration, “…it was also fun to work on scenes of glamorous people socialising in beautiful surroundings!”

Rendered using her signature combination of gouache & ink on watercolour paper and incorporating painted elements of collage, Sarah’s sparing use of line and washes of colour bring relaxation to the forefront, with figures not bound by tense outlines and are instead allowed to settle into the scenery of the spa.

After such an intense burst of creativity to meet the deadline, Sarah made a return journey to the spa after it opened to see how it compared to her illustrations;

“It was amazing to go back to the hotel a few months after the spa opened and see the spaces in real life, looking beautiful and even better than the designs on paper. They had also framed prints of the illustrations and included them in much of the decor.”