Botanical course with coloured pencils

On May 20th I attended a Botanical course with coloured pencils for 2 days at Missenden Abbey.  The tutor was Jill Winch and as we were only a group of six we all had a lot of one to one help.   Like all colour mediums it is the experience in which colour to use that is important.  I hadn't much experience in using polychromos pencils and I was amazed at the effect and opacity of the medium.

I chose a clematis and it took the entire two days to complete!  The drawing was on Fabiano Artistico paper which is a lovely paper to work on and it is the first time I have drawn on this type of paper. 
On the whole I came out with a picture and the rudiments of how to colour leaves, the importance of accuracy and observation, the use of embossing, and how to produce a bloom effect on fruit.
What I already know about myself is that I have to work more quickly, I found that I tackled the drawing with much more confidence and I did this quickly but I was more tentative about applying colour and this took the time.  Whether I will go back and study botanical work in more depth I do not know as I am trying to move away from exacting drawing and trying to be more expressive.  I felt this was encouraging me to be precis and exact which was very useful from an observational point of view but not so good for freeing up your work.