Ta-da!: We present you with… the Flow Tear Calendar 2016! With our “A Year of Tiny Pleasures Calendar 2016,” you can enjoy one Tiny Pleasure – like sipping tea from your favorite cup, finding something you thought you’d lost, hearing a song that moves you, or getting post from abroad – every day, for a whole year. And to make it even sweeter, each one has been illustrated by Deborah van der Schaaf.
A photo of Deborah’s workplace
We loved Deborah’s little eye-openers in Flow Weekly (her Tiny Pleasures checklist posters) and are delighted with the end result of this project. Drawing an entire calendar, of course, was a full-on task for Deborah, as the following information and figures show:
- Deborah made a total of 366 illustrations, one for each day (2016 is a leap year!).
- For that, she used about 20 black pens and 1 set of watercolors.
- A daily deviation did wonders for her inspiration (in addition, she also asked everyone she knows what their little pleasures are – that’s how the smiley face in the peanut butter, for example, end up in the calendar).
- In order to meet the deadline, Deborah had to draw about five illustrations a day, which she did for six weeks. Of course, that doesn’t add up to 366, but she was able to use some of the illustrations from her Tiny Pleasures checklist posters that had already been featured in Flow Weekly, which helped!
- While drawing, she mainly drank green tea – about four cups a day. That adds up to around 168 cups of tea being imbibed during the production of this calendar.
- When she’s working, Deborah likes to listen to music; soundtracks of films and series, for example, such as the “Girls” playlist on Spotify or the soundtrack from La Meglio Gioventù. During this project, she also listened to Agnes Obel, Dustin O’Halloran, and “Fisherman’s Woman” by Emiliana Torrini.
- Every Monday, Deborah and Flow’s Caroline Buijs had a review together. They counted how many illustrations they already had, and planned which picture should go where.
- What was interesting was that Deborah was easily able to fill the months of the year she likes the most with Tiny Pleasures. She had a lot of ideas for July and August, for example, but for February and November, she had to look a little harder.
- Deborah’s three personal favorites are: February 2 “Groundhog Day,” where the groundhog from the movie has a photo of actor Bill Murray between his paws; July 29 ”Go to the beach”; and August 11 “Old love.” This last one is the wedding anniversary of Deborah’s parents, and – by amazing coincidence – of Caroline’s parents, too. And they only found out once the illustration had been created.
- The Flow Tear Calendar 2016 is available in stores or via our webshop.
https://vimeo.com/138713528
