A Happy Accident

On Saturday morning I was playing around with my younger son, Sam, who likes to paint and draw. I had sketched out a stalk of wheat and threw down a quick watercolor wash of blue for a background, while he watercolored one of his numerous drawings of monsters and mythical beasts. I even grabbed one of his colored pencils and dabbed on a few bits of color for the lower grains of wheat. Although at that point I didn't think I'd come back to the image, that night I decided to experiment. I pulled out my own colored pencils - rarely used - and started working on the wheat stalk again. After perhaps 30 to 45 minutes of blending about a dozen colors, plus some pen and ink accents, I finished with the result you see here. In the end I was pleasantly surprised by the results. (By the way, it's a 5" x 7".)