Crocus painting

Crocus  6" x 6" acrylic

This is the last of the paintings I completed since the weekend. I think it actually looks better in person that I captured in this photo. Must be all the glare off  the acrylic. I worked on this one last night, finishing up around 1am. Honestly, I love that the house is quiet and I can dive right into these pieces, painting all hours until I am happy with them. Seems to me that I got started on this after I made dinner, wait...what did we have for dinner? My brain must be fried because I have to stop and focus to remember the last cooked meal...Oh! Seafood cassarole, cauliflower and garlic bread. 

OK - so after a late dinner I cleaned up and got this painting done - probably 2 1/2-3 hours. Late in the day to start, but at least I got another painting complete. This one has a lot of movement as the ground in my reference photo was kind of blah wood mulch, so I took some liberties with the texture.

It's funny, but these little flowers were tough to paint. I have a pastel of crocus that I completed recently, and I think the acrylic was a bit more work. The color is very saturated and transitions greatly in value from center to edges of the petals.

Crocus  10" x 4" pastel

For comparison, here is the pastel I created of the same subject. The pastel was tough to get saturated enough, but easy to blend from dark to light. The acrylic was more intense (I must be short on brilliant blue pastels) but challenging to blend correctly before drying on the canvas.

Which medium do you think worked better? I'd love to get some feedback on this.