Sunshine

Hello,

I hope you've had a good week.  Today I'm sharing an illustration I made following an article I read entitled 'Can we say goodbye to suncream?'  Sometimes I read articles and some ideas randomly spring to mind and I also want to expand on my subject matter a bit.  I also felt like drawing something sunny as it is summertime, although just lately here this is not so evident!
I new I wanted to do something with sun rays, suncream factors and bottles, and I also wanted to stick to a limited palette taking advantage of the combination of warm and cooler colours.  This is the end result.

I tried a number of different layouts, some with the bottles scrunched in the middle as the sun but in the end this one worked best in my opinion, the idea being the suncream is being thrown away by the sun rays.  The conclusion of the article is that we are not there yet, so keep layering on the cream!
Below are some of ideas I played around with.

That's it for now.  I've got a day of drawing and painting ahead working on something new.  Have a lovely weekend :).

Autumn sunshine

Hello,

Brrr, it's been a bit nippy this weekend, but the sun has been out so I've been enjoying a day of sunny painting, hurrah!
So, I've now been reunited with my laptop, all back, fixed, (even cleaned!) and earlier than expected so I'm feeling a lot happier, (and very relieved).
I mentioned previously that I'd spent a few days in the Norfolk/Suffolk countryside just recently so I wanted to share some illustrations inspired by the trip.  I always find taking time out of regular life and going on long walks out in nature refreshes me so much, and I always come back full of ideas following what I've seen.
The Chicken below was one of the few (some more willing to pose for photos than others!) found in the gardens at Felbrigg Hall.  They are free to roam around as they wish and have some rather fancy homes.  There were also some beautifully coloured and knobbly squash dotted around the gardens.  Along with lots of lovely plants and a few flowers.

I made this swan pattern following a walk along the river stour, on a lovely sunny day.  

I love the colours of the lichen on this tree contrasted with the blue and green :).

Ok, that's it for now.  I've got an early start tomorrow so I need to start organising myself.  I'll be back later in the week with more updates.  I hope you had a lovely weekend! 

Exhibition and food illustrations

Hello,

Wow, it's been another lovely hot hot week here.  I can't believe the weather this summer, it's been amazing!  I've got so used to leaving the house without having to worry about taking layers in case it gets cold, it's lovely.
So this week I've been working on some lovely food illustrations for an editorial commission.  I can't wait to show the images as I loved creating them.  I also got out to the Royal Academy to see the Summer Exhibition.  I often miss this but was determined to go this year as Grayson Perry is the curator so I thought I would enjoy it, and it feels like an age since I last went to an exhibition.  I wasn't disappointed.  I took loads of photos so I'll share some here.  My absolute favourite was the incredible knitted and crocheted sculpture Royal Valkyrie by Joana Vasconcelos which fills the octagonal space as you enter.  It's so colourful and delicious, it was a wonderful start to the exhibition.

I also wanted to share a recent iced coffee illustration.  I do love a good coffee, who doesn't?  I drew a load of coffee pots so I thought I'd share those also (I also have a whole bunch of coffee glasses).  I limited myself to only brown rich coffee shades for this illustration.  I really enjoyed drawing the beans and leaves.

After my Royal Academy visit yesterday I also popped to Burlington Arcade and snapped this lovely installation, lots of lovely hanging paper flowers.  Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, they don't do it justice.

So, that's it for now.  I'm off to Bodycombat this morning then back to edit the food illustrations and work on some nature themed work.  I hope you have a lovely weekend whatever you get up to :).

Summery delights

Hello,

I thought I'd share some recent summer inspired food I've illustrated.  This year in the UK we are having a proper summer, which is very exciting!  So everyday has been warm and sunny for weeks which is lovely (although today is cloudy, but hopefully that's a one off, it's still warm!).  My flat gets very hot as it's on the top floor and gets the sunshine in the afternoon and evening, so it means I can't be cooking and creating more heat, so there's been a lot of yummy salads.  One particular favourite has been courgette with pine nuts and basil or my version of pesto (minus the cheese) which I have to say has been delicious.  It's super light, fresh and yummy.  I've been having it with another cannellini bean salad which I'm going to draw up soon, and sometimes potato salad.  Maybe that sounds like quite a lot of food.....hmm, eating is good.

I loved working on these in the sunshine (with the fan going obviously).  I really hope this weather lasts, it's just a joy to feel the sun on your skin and not worry about taking layers wherever you go.  I'm really enjoying it.  Today I'm working on another coffee illustration and then I'm hoping to get to a local park researching for some new work.  Have a lovely weekend :).

A little break

Hello,

I've had a lovely week.  I finally took a proper few days off and incredibly picked the week with the best weather so far :D!  I went to visit my family back in Norfolk and spent time in the countryside, and by the coast, in what was permanent sunshine, I really could not believe my luck.  As the weather was so good it was also the perfect excuse to try several varieties of delicious ice cream, yum.  Below are some pictures of my time there.

I really enjoyed getting away, I've come back full of new ideas, and got to work on some new illustrations inspired by my travels.  I love creating work in this way.
In honour of the sun (which is not with me today :(, it has been a day of rain) here's a recent sunny Illustration I created all about bees.  I wanted a really limited sunny warm toned palette for this one.

I hope you've had a great week and enjoyed the sunshine if it was around where you were :). 

Sunshine and Website update

Hello there,

It's a beautiful sunny day here in London today hooray!  There's definitely been a lack of those just recently so it's fantastic to have such beautiful weather :).
I've been busy over the last week or so with amongst other things completely re-designing and relocating my website.  This is something I'd been wanting to do for a long time.  I was never entirely happy with how my previous site looked, but was quite nervous about undertaking a big re-design because I was worried just how long it would take, and whether I would be able to create what I was after.  In the end I had about a week of downtime and I'm so happy that I decided to do it.  I'm now with Squarespace following a recommendation, thank you! and I've been so happy both with the level of support they give and all the guidance they have available.  For someone with very little knowledge of website creation they have fantastic templates and how to guides.  I'm pretty much done for now so if you'd like to check it out take a look here sharonfarrow.com and let me know what you think!

Besides that I thought I'd share some recent work especially as it seems a fitting day for strawberries! These are strawberry shortcakes (my Mums are delicious :)).  I really enjoyed doing all the plate decoration and detail.

Yesterday I also popped into the Roundhouse to see the immersive installation +/- Human.  I loved it. I found both the orbs and the music totally mesmerising and hypnotic.  I'd just been to the gym so I settled down on the floor all relaxed and just watched them whirring all around me.  It finishes tomorrow so if you're in the area I'd really recommend popping in.  

Ok that's it for now.  I hope you're having a lovely weekend.  It's bank holiday here in the UK so that combined with such gorgeous weather is a real treat!

Buildings and gardens

Hello!

I thought I'd share something I finished working on this week.  I been wanting to challenge myself to draw more buildings.  I often draw specific buildings for maps and so on, but they're always small in scale, so I've been wanting to make some work that was just a building at a larger scale for a while now.  I've also been keen to draw the Liberty building for ages.  I think it's beautiful, and I also pass it a lot.  Twice a week I go to a gym close by in the early morning, and I've been doing this for quite a long time now.  The Liberty building is the first thing I notice as I come out from the tube station and I've seen it in the dark, in the light, sunshine, rain, fog pretty much any weather!  It's just a lovely thing to see especially at a quieter time of the day.

Today I visited the Geffrye Museum somewhere I've wanted to go for a while.  It's a small museum of the home and has recreations of room and garden layouts from the last 400 years, set in old almshouse buildings.  I've been living in London for many years now and I still find places I've never been this was one of those.  Pictures below.

That's it for now, back to work drawing green veggies, yum!  Have a great weekend :)

A day at the beach

Hello,

A few weeks back I took a little trip back to Norfolk and visited what is possibly my favourite beach there.  As a child I used to go regularly to Wells-next-the-sea so I have a lot of happy memories from that time.  It's great to go when the it's a lovely hot day and you can paddle.  The tide goes out a long way but leaves little pools behind so you have warmish water to swim and paddle in, I love it!  The beach is huge so even if it's busy you can walk and walk and get away from it all.  There's a pine forest behind the beach huts which you can also wander through.  I've been when it's hot, when it's cold and windy too, it's just a lovely place to go to whatever the weather.
So after that little visit I made a piece of work based on it.  I spent ages working on the colours for the huts.  In reality they're all a variety of colours but I wanted them all to relate to each other and share the colouring.
Here's the finished piece

Here's some of the work in progress colour sketches.  I tend to make a lot so I can really sort colours and have all sorts of scraps with marks and textures which I then keep as they are so helpful for future work.  Then I piece it all together before working on the final.

Here's some photos of the beach, ahh it's a lovely hot day today and it would be great to be there!

I hope you're having a lovely weekend, I'm gazing out at a lovely blue sky and looking forward to another sunny day tomorrow :)

Hello there,

In case you haven't seen my instagram I've recently just been on my first visit to Barcelona.  It was an amazing trip, I absolutely loved it.  I hadn't been out of the country for a pretty long time so I was desperate to go and see something new, I couldn't have picked a more perfect place.  There was so much to see, beauty and colour everywhere, plus lovely sunshine everyday.  Of course all the Gaudi architecture was amazing and I adored Park Guell.  I had a list of everything I really wanted to see and I saw all the major sites and museums, but as always when you travel there are always extra things you find when you get there and there are some great museums which are pretty quiet and fascinating to go around.  The Museu Frederic Mares is set in a lovely courtyard and houses some of his collections of pretty much anything.  Near to that is the Museu D'historia de Barcelona where you take a walk around Roman excavations.  I spent a lot of time exploring by foot stopping to see anything that took my interest, plus I got to go in the sea :) it really couldn't have been better.  I'm planning to create some work based on this trip so I'll come back with that soon.  Now I'm just thinking where next!

Here's a few photos :).

Museu Nacional D'Art De Catalunya

Park Guell

Park Guell

Fundacio Joan Miro

Casa Batllo

Casa Batllo

La Pedrera

Museu Frederic Mares

Have a great week!

Hello,

I hope you're having a good weekend.  As I mentioned previously a few weeks back I had a few days away back in Norfolk.  Whilst I was there out and about visiting lots of lovely countryside I couldn't help but get inspired by what I saw.  There were some lovely wildflowers just blowing gently in the wind, such gorgeous sunny colours.  I came back and really wanted to do something floral so I created the piece below.  It was lovely to draw and paint this in the sunshine back home in my flat :).

Enjoy your week! x