Tale of Two Dogs

Recently I used the same reference photo to create very different paintings. The subject is my niece's dog  named Stormy, a Great Pyrenees dog that was quite large, but very gentle and loving.  The photo needed artistic interpretation as it was a white dog on white sand on a sunny day.   The camera picked up the shadows as blue on both the dog and on the sand.

The first approach entailed using several experimental techniques.  I started by applying white gesso to part of a black pastel paper plus added some glitter acrylic paint.  I then applied soft pastel over the white gesso to create the dog and then finished it with some black gesso in the background.

The second rendition was more traditional, starting with grey pastel paper and a color palette for a blue sky and beige sand to contrast with the white dog.

Now that you have seen them both--which do you prefer?