2D Character animation approach

Hi community,

I am taking back on 2D game design, aiming towards an 2D adventure game. I am trying to get on this stage by stage and decided to start with animating my main character, as it is probably the character that will have the most important number of animations. I am trying to get a detailed hero and animations are going to be important.

I am trying to get my head around the approach of sprite animation and here is what I am having trouble figuring out. I have multiple animation cycles but let's focus on a standard "standing" position (when the character does nothing).
Each frame of the animation is in a separate image file (4 files) and I have a blinking cycle composed of 3 frames (so that makes 12 separate sprites). My question is, based on this structure, how can I mixed those together to make my character blink randomly ?

To be a bit clearer we have :
frame 0 of the blinking cycle : standing_0 -> standing_1 -> standing_2 -> standing_3
frame 1 of the blinking cycle : standing_0 -> standing_1 -> standing_2 -> standing_3
frame 2 of the blinking cycle : standing_0 -> standing_1 -> standing_2 -> standing_3

If anyone can help me on this that would be really appreciated.

Cheers.