Ghost Orchid Painting - Experimenting with Watercolor Pencils

I was inspired to try something by a post several years ago on the previous instantiation of Misti Little's blog (Oceanic Wilderness in my blogroll). In the post, she was interviewing an artist friend who used watercolor pastels to do painting and was describing how they gave her the precision of pastel drawing with the final result looking like a watercolor after water was applied to the paper. This intrigued me immensely, so I filed this away in my brain. Fast-forward to about two weeks ago, where I was picking up some art supplies for my kids--I spied a box of watercolor pencils.

I figured I'd give them a whirl. I immediately fixed upon Miguel Urquia's Ghost Orchid as my subject of interest. Here's the photo below:



And here's the result. I feel like it's pretty good for my first effort, but I definitely have some room for improvement:



Here are a couple of detail shots:





Let me know what you think in the comments, but please remember, this is my first attempt at this medium.

---Prem