Is it Goodbye, Whirligig?

Dingies at the Dock 12"x12" on gallery wrap canvas
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There’s a dinghy with a beautiful blue interior that I love to paint. It’s called Whirligig and it lives in Tenants Harbor, Maine.

Every time we visit, I try to get a new photo of it and any other boat touching it on the crowded dinghy dock. But there’s one photo I keep coming back to.

I keep coming back to this photo.

My first painting using that reference was called Dinghies at the Dock. I stuck pretty closely to the original photo and the real life colors of the three dinghy’s interiors. It’s 12”x12” in oils. Note that I left out the shadows of the ramp railings that fall inside the dinghy.
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Blue on Blue Dinghy - 6"x6" oil on canvas
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My second painting included only whirligig and the dock. It was small, only 6”x6”, but in acrylic. This time I got some of the transom in, using other photo references of the boat.
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Whirligig - 24"x24" on gallery wrap canvas
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My latest painting included all three boats again, but it's 24”x24”, also in oils. This time I turned the image a bit and went wild with the inside colors of the other two boats. Scaling it up this big was a challenge, but I think it makes a great statement at this size.
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The first painting hanging on the wall, showing the gallery wrap canvas.
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And this summer, when we stopped in Tenants Harbor on our way home from Penobscot Bay I couldn’t find Whirligig! Admittedly, it was the weekend, so maybe she was on a mooring doing her dinghy duty. I hope so, I’d hate for this to be “goodbye, Whirligig!”.
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