Measuring Time with Flowers

While organizing my files at the beginning of the year I realized that one of the ways how I measure my time is by the things that happen every year - but not at predictable dates. 

Birthdays, seasons, the rhythm of school, public holidays - all create a backdrop. And then there are things that happen every year but you almost never know when exactly they will happen. The first duckling in the park. The first cherry tree to bloom. Last rain of the winter. Each time I got to run in my winter gear. 

One of these things are flowers - most of the bouquets in my life appear unplanned and unexpected. I am not a big fan of obligatory flower gifting but I love flowers and people around me know this. So I get all kinds of amazing and exotic bouquets (my friends gave me once a bouquet of carrots for my birthday) and measure my time by them. 

These are sketches of the first bouquet of 2019. I will post more of them soon. 

Saratoga Public Library crossed off my list.

I am a "list" person - I have many lists. For example, I keep a list of places/things/events I want to draw. It's long and there are some destinations on it that will take time to get to (who wants to go sketch glaciers with me? Aurora borealis in Iceland? :) but there are some places that are not that far from my everyday life.

The life of this list can be described as a sinusoid wave - I add things and then I don't and then I forget I even have this list and then suddenly I decide that no matter the workload and life load but the morning of upcoming Friday should be spent outside painting. I have a friend who always supports me in these decisions (and often inspires me to make one:) - Suhita. And my list is where we got an idea to sketch Saratoga Public Library as it stands against Santa Cruz Mountains. We ended up drawing library, church nearby, lovely mustard flowers and then library visitors.

As usual, after I cross something off the list a few ideas come to mind so the more I use it the longer it gets...