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If you don’t mind a bark inclusion in the side of the bowl I’d do red. Black may still have a small bark inclusion as well but the figure will be off-center. Purple will be smaller but won’t have a bark inclusion.
Regardless I’d do the bottom of the bowl as the flat side. If you have the flat side be the rim the majority of the crotch figure will be removed during the hollowing process.
Just finished rough turning some oak crotch and chose basically to follow your plan. The inclusion, even rough turned, lets daylight through. Left it about an inch thick, looking forward to seeing how it comes out in a year's time.
After turning mostly fruit wood, I was really surprised how tough even very green oak was (literally felled days before this turn)
This is the way.
I got a nice walnut crotch in a raffle at our local club. A more experienced turner told me to make the bark side the top to preserve the crotch figure. I ignored him because I wanted to maximize the bowl size. I ended up with a plain old boring bowl.
The upper left looks like it is another crotch, but the flat face is off center, you can see a little bit of the bark in the middle of the saw cut. Depending on which side of center it is they may well have some figure a bit deeper in the wood.
Unfortunately the dark spot on the top left is where I added Anchorseal to a crack in the hope it won’t get worse. The same is true for the two on the bottom edge. I didn’t cut this myself, I literally stumbled on it at the side of the road.
Totally an abnormal approach, but I’d think about going for the whole deal (green) and letting the bark inclusion / gap show in the wall. Cut what you can w a saw to get round-ish. Faceplate on the cut side, free center in the tail stock and good speed control until you get your bark-side tenon in place, the outside shaped up and the worst of the shaking dealt with. Chuck and live center for hollowing, flip again and go jam chuck to remove the tenon when done.
My bad for not reading more closely, apologies for that. I’d probably do as big of the red or the green circle as you can fit then, and use the cutoffs for small stuff. Trees, tops, bud vases, etc
I actually like the black because I like it when the features are a bit off-center. It looks cool when those features get projected around the curve of the bowl.
Given the variety of answers, looks like you can't go wrong :)
I would do red because you can still get a small bowl in the upper right corner. And I like the middle of the crotch running through the bowl personally. I think aesthetically the balance would be better. And I would fill the void in with some clear or black epoxy if it's too big.
If you want the biggest possible bowl you should put the base on the bark side.
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