Michael has been kind enough to share with us his first attempt at colored pencils. He is actually currently still working on it. Here are his thoughts at this point:

You asked to see what became of our colored pencil drawings started in the Berkeley class in May. Well, attached is mine.

I was planning to put in as background the violet tarmac,cracked from the heat. I did that, but it ended up so dark and dense and purple that it wiped out the flowers and leaves. I so tried going over it with black or darker purple to push it into the background, but the sheer intensity of it still overwhelmed the picture - and made it plain that the flowers themselves and the leaves aren't that light or bright - they didn't stand out from the darker background, they disappeared into it. So I have erased all the background down to a light remnant; some of the edges of the flowers and leaves have been lightened unintentionally as a result (but can be fixed easily). Now I am trying to figure out what to make the background so it throws the flowers into relief, while remaining a background.