Asparagus: Which would you choose?

Asparagus spears. watercolor 7.5″ x 11″ Available. Click on image to view larger

Wet in wet painting of asparagus. Watercolor 4″ x 11″. Available. Click on image to view larger.

After doing some studies on painting asparagus, yesterday the work came together in these two rather different pieces.  Both have wet in wet elements, but have different feels.  Do you have a preference?  I’ve polled my household, and so far there’s one vote for each.

The upper one is a wet in wet background, made by wetting the paper with water and when it’s settled in, stroking on blues and yellows and then sprinkling some salt on it while wet.  That’s what makes the sparkly areas.

After that I painted in the spears letting the various greens merge and then scraped aside the areas of the tips and along the stem, and then went back in and lifted some color using a damp brush to model the shapes more.

The second one is completely wet in wet.  Paper wet, colors in and then using thicker and thicker puddles of pigment I build up the shapes of the spears, did some scraping, and then some painting when it was dry.

Which one do you like better?  Thanks for stopping by…