High winds, great conker stash!

Just look at all these beauties. The strong winds today have resulted in hundreds of conkers. My boys couldn't believe their luck! We collected a mountain of conkers in 10 minutes. My friend informs me that if you put a conker in the corner of your room it will keep away the spiders, sounds crazy, but I've plently of conkers so may try this one out. Another strange piece of advice given to me this week was to put Vicks vapour rub on your kids feet, then put their socks on, apparently this will stop a night-time cough! Not so sure about trying this one!

A Quiet Moment w.i.p., day 2

Had a very busy day today, so unfortunately the progress on this has been limited. I'm still using mainly conte pastel (hard), as I've worked mostly on the stone steps. Have started to introduce some colour, generally experimenting with the palette I want to use. I think I want to keep it simple.
The steps are making me feel sea-sick when I look at them on this photo, so I guess the perspective still requires some work! Next I'm going to consider the drawing of my son, then get stuck into the water. I'm leaving the water to last as I think I will need lots of soft pastels, so don't want to have to lean my hand on them to work on other areas of the drawing. At some point I will have to go for it, so I can see how the drawing works as a whole.

A quiet moment... w.i.p. day 1

This one I think is going to challenge me. Its a totally self indulgent piece.I love the lighting on the steps, the ripples on the water of the fountain, and the little boy is my son, so it goes without saying I love the subject too!
I've sketched out the composition with conte. The perspective of the steps I found challenging, hope I get it right as its so key to the composition. Looking forward to doing the water, it has some beautiful movement in it, just hope I have the skill to capture it!