In 2008, a friend and I went to France where I took a zillion photos. Like most of my travel photos pre-ArtWeWonderful days, they sat on my computer gathering virtual dust. About a year ago, I went through all these photos and set aside a large number of them to “one day” turn into drawings.

Well, I got around to turning one of them into a piece for my friend’s birthday in June. And this past week, I turned a second one into another drawing, which I’m calling “The Parisian Affliction of Floral Indecision”.

The memory: I was sitting on top of one of those “Hop-On Hop-Off” buses, snapping away at all the street scenes when the bus stopped at a red light in the beautiful Montparnasse arrondissement of Paris. I stopped snapping and looked down to the street. Here was this amazing flower market on the corner, every type of flower you could imagine. And I saw this woman, standing amongst the endless options, deep in decision-making mode. Oh, such a difficult and wonderful decision to make on this glorious spring day! I wanted to switch places with her! Luckily, I snapped out of my daydream long enough to photograph the moment before the bus pulled away.

The Parisian Affliction of Floral Indecision

I’ve wanted to sketch this memory for several months but I finally set aside some time last week. The detail of the photo intimidated me so I first decided to draw it very loosely. I started in that direction (as you can tell from the wonky awning lettering), but then I got enthralled with all the various shapes and types of flowers and the shadows on the awning. I ended up taking the rest of the drawing in a less loose direction. So like a hybrid flower, I created a hybrid drawing! Ha!

(Permanent Carbon Ink drawing with watercolour on Fabriano Extra White Artistico Watercolour paper)