Beginning a new pastel in 2011

I haven't painted in pastel since the holidays began at Thanksgiving because my pastel studio is in the kitchen and kitchen table.  Now I'm back in the kitchen and it is not cooking!  It felt strange!  Like I didn't know where to start.  So, I thought it would be fun and a challenge for myself to do colorful cactus on black sanded paper.  The shapes are fairly simple and I can play with various ways of blending, or not blending at all.  I can see how far I can go to build up the lights on a black paper.  I can decide how much or how little of the black I want to show through.  Here is the first stage - blocking in the shapes and trying out various colors.  It doesn't look like much right now....this is a work in progress.

I took on another challenge for 2011.  I was accepted into a new Daily Painters of Nevada blogsite.  You can see it at http://www.dailypaintersofnevada.blogspot.com/ .  Then I also joined their specialty blogs for pastel and pencil art.  You can see these at http://pastelartistsinternational.blogspot.com/ and http://pencilartistsinternational.blogspot.com/ .  These are all under the umbrella website of Contemporary Fine Art International.  You can view their website and learn about it at http://contemporaryfineartinternational.com/ .  SO!  I will be posting to my own blog as well as 3 others!!!  The minimum number of posts they would like is at least 2 a week (they can be works in progress).  I need to do at least one pastel painting a week and maybe two drawings a week.  I still want to do watercolor painting here and there too.  WOW!  I think I can do this.  Maybe my husband can take up cooking (????)