Birthday Bouquet

Prismacolor colored pencils on Strathmore Bristol, vellum finish

Back on Washington's birthday, I mentioned a birthday-related piece I've been working on. So, here you go: this is a drawing that I did for my sister's birthday. I took the birth flower for the month of her birthday, and combined it with the birth flower for the month of her daughter's birthday, for a little "family bouquet". And since her three cats are an important part of her family, I tucked in three sprigs of catmint in for good measure, and tied it all up with a ribbon bearing their last name.

I love the symbolism of flowers. Besides birth month flowers, there's a whole tradition of floral meanings. Floriography, or communicating through the coded language of flowers, was especially popular in the Victorian era—I find it fascinating. I recently read a really wonderful novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh called The Language of Flowers. It's a contemporary story, but a lot of the plot revolves around flowers and their traditional symbolism. (It's also set in the San Francisco Bay area, where I live, which made it doubly interesting to me.)

I'm planning on doing one of these bouquets for my own immediate family; it's a concept that I think would work well as a customized gift for weddings and births as well, don't you think?