This Time What's New? - Sarah Buell Dowling

This oil painting is based on a photo taken by my friend, Malcolm Hughes (www.mhughesart.com), and was photographed on Jekyll Island, GA, a beautiful coastal island of inlets, marsh, and native and migratory birds.

It took me forever to figure out what was going on in the left wing as it really is a study in movement. I want to do a large watercolor of this piece as I love the way the wing disappears and reappears as the light hits it.

Oil and watercolor are so different. With watercolor you would be able to blend the background and wing. If you saturated the paper, lay the paint in, one color following the other (with watercolor your paper is usually at a 45Â° angle so that the paint runs down the paper), the colors would blend. This effect would be almost impossible to render in oil. With oil you can move the paint around and change things so easily but blending is, to my mind, more difficult (I’m reasonably proficient in watercolor but still a babe with respect to oil). Watercolor is not as forgiving as oil but you can lift color, and it’s easier than people realize – Magic Eraser not only cleans the floor but it works wonders at lifting pigment…

I’m amazed at how much white paint you use with oils. It’s just the opposite with watercolor. You don’t even use white paint. You just work around the white of the paper or lay down a very translucent wash, and lift with your damp brush where you want white.

I don’t know if you want all this information or not but my husband says that people are interested. Let me know as I thought I might take pictures of my process next time so you could see how a painting evolves.

Oil painting of little girl I saw on Saba, a Caribbean island

Little Saba Girl

This is an oil painting of a little girl I saw on Saba, an island in the Caribbean. I loved her expression, and the Spanish features of her face, the young nose that is still flat at the tip. It is really difficult to do the eye in this position. It’s so easy to make someone look rather bizarre. I love her mouth. Beautiful!

This is a watercolor of a man fishing at Gould’s Inlet where I walk every morning with my dog. I’ve painted this fellow numerous times as I love the colors and the lighting of the hat, his skin, and the shirt. There is great challenge in not only making the light and colors sing, but in making the shirt hang well. I love painting fabric that is lit in some way.