Two New Paintings

I have been busy with visitors again....you'd think I was a gregarious soul, but I am not.  Not only that, but I have another guest coming in a week, my friend Josie from Milwaukee.  Nevertheless, I've painted these two paintings.  The first is the last gasp of the series of the neighborhood around my house.  It started as  a drawing that was going to rival anything in DRAWING magazine.  I got out my pencil, erasers, and a good piece of drawing paper........also a ruler.  I should have known that anything requiring a ruler is not my forte, but I proceeded to sketch on the composition.  That was the end of that.  Despite the fact that I very much admire detailed architectural drawings, I realized that I wasn't up to the task.  I was already bored.  So, I got out my pastels and did this.  It's the house next door, with the corner of my roof in the upper left corner.

The bottom is a pastel of the cactus that sits on the floor beside my desk.  It is about four feet tall, having inched its way imperceptibly from a six inch baby that I bought in 1998.  The painting is looking down from above, but it's only the bottom half.  The two branches at the top keep on going.  I worked hard on this, to make it look the way I had envisioned.  I tend not to get a good value range with pastels until I've first driven myself crazy.  This took me two days,  It's about 12 x 16.  The top one is only about 8x10, since I had planned to work hard on every little detail.  So much for that.