Artistic Licence or not?

My neighbour recently moved out of the area. She'd been here many, many years but we've only known her since we moved here, almost 5 years ago. I thought it would be nice to do her a drawing of her bungalow as a memento of her time here. I popped outside with my camera and took a photo to use for reference. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the sun was shining brightly.

Though I was initially quite pleased with my effort, the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. At first I was unsure why but then realised it was because of the shadows. The reference photo was taken on a very sunny day with strong shadows and, as usual, I stuck too rigidly to the reference. Those dark angular areas were spoiling the shape of her house. 

Unfortunately for my neighbour there were some delays with her move but that afforded me the time to do the drawing again. This time I used our old friend 'artistic licence' and I imagined the house without the shadows. That left too much white paper so I decided to draw in the brickwork, which I don't normally do other than a few small sections hinting at what might be there. Doing so has separated the house from the white of the paper and allowed the shape of the building to have more depth and dimension. 

I was much happier with the second version so that is the one I gave her, and she was delighted. I'll be really interested to hear how you all view the differences, and which of the two you prefer.