A Golden Retriever Refreshed

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Recently, a pet portrait client of mine contacted me for help in re-vitalizing the artwork of the NorCal Golden Retriever Rescue's (NGRR) logo. My client is an area rescue coordinator for NGRR and I've done portraits of two of her goldens and will be doing more portraits for her in the future. NGRR has been using this artwork for years but the originals have been lost and the versions they have are degraded and/or low-resolution. My client wants to make some decals and other items for the organization and the current art just wouldn't do. Of course, there were time and budget constraints as well.



Since the existing art is iconic for the organization, I couldn't do a complete overhaul, but the files I had to work from weren't very helpful. I enlarged them to the size I wanted for the new drawing and they were pixelated and grainy. I told her I would do my best to make the new art look like the existing work, but the drawing would be different. I decided on a pen & ink drawing as the best way to go. It would be the quickest, most affordable option and it will also reproduce well for various purposes.

Below are both versions enlarged; I think you can see the challenges in working with these two images!



I wanted to do the new drawing at approx. 5" x 7" - so I enlarged both existing images to the same size and printed them out. I traced over the old black and white version with pencil, tidied up the pencil drawing and then started inking. I had to do a lot of guessing and interpretation as I tried to use information from both of the old, fuzzy images. I'm pretty sure the old black & white version was either a half-tone of the color image or a pen & ink version drawn somewhere along the way.


The final drawing is a hybrid of both of the old images. I didn't want it to be as dark and blocky as the black & white image, but since I was using pen & ink, it's darker than the color image. The new drawing is not what I would have done if I'd had free reign to start from scratch, but I think it captures the spirit and intent of the original art and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

To see my really detailed golden retriever portraits in ink on scratchboard, click here.
I also did a fun portrait of a happy golden in color, click here for that one.

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"Sunny Goat" - New Art

Saturday, September 18, 2010


"Sunny Goat" - 4" x 4", ink, watercolor and color pencil on watercolor Art Board

This painting of a cute pygmy goat kid will be available at my upcoming Open Studio Garage Art Thing on September 25th (scroll down for more info).

I came up with this yellow & purple color scheme after painting two other goats in shades of orange and purple. Although the colors of this painting aren't exactly true-to-life, they're not as over-the-top as the orange goats. I titled it "Sunny Goat" because the yellow tones make him look sun-washed.


The original photo.


The cropped version to fit the square format. I also adjusted the contrast a bit.



Ink and watercolor applied at this stage. The colors are a little "off", but this was just a quick photo of the progress. After this, I painted a bit more and then added color pencil to finish it.



A detail of the finished piece.


If you're going to be in the Newcastle, CA area on Saturday the 25th, here's the information about my art show. Click on either side of the postcard for a larger image.




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Materials used for "Sunny Goat":
Watercolor Art Board
Micron Pen (black ink)
Daniel Smith Watercolors
Prismacolor Colored Pencils
Krylon UV Resistant Clear Spray

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Puppies!!!!

Friday, September 10, 2010



Talk about a fun time! I spent an hour and a half with Lynn Howe of A New Hope Animal Foundation and seven 7-week-old pit bull terrier puppies yesterday morning. It was absolutely delightful! I took tons of photos, cuddled and kissed puppies and laughed at their silly antics. I also really enjoyed talking with Lynn about her organization and what they do to socialize pups and give them a good foundation before they're sent off to new homes.





There are more puppy photos in my Flickr album.

A New Hope also rescues adult dogs, cats/kittens and rabbits and works closely with Placer County Animal Services and other local groups to make these animals more adoptable by socializing them and giving them at least some basic training.


This is the pup that stole my heart! She's a sweetie, but it's also because of her coloring - I love border collies, and we had a BC mix with a patch over his eye.

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Beau - Standard Poodle Portrait

Wednesday, September 01, 2010


"Beau" - 8" x 8"

This handsome, happy guy is Beau, a black standard poodle. My clients liked my photo with his mouth open, but they also liked another photo where his ears were windblown, so I combined the two - pulling the windblown parts of his ears from another photo.





With all his curly and wavy hair, this portrait in watercolor on Yupo was an interesting one to tackle. I knew I'd be able to figure out a way to render his texture, but didn't really have a plan until I jumped in and started. I also knew it would be impossible to get all that detail into this looser style of painting, so from the start, my plan was to "interpret" Beau's texture. I took a few photos of the process along the way.


I painted the background first, as I usually do with this type of portrait. With a damp brush, I cleaned up the edges of the dog and started to lift out tendrils of hair as well. The white area is the unpainted Yupo; the hard edges of green on the upper half are edges I haven't cleaned up yet.


A close-up of the tendrils on the ear.


I filled in the ears with paint, not worrying about any detail, I just wanted a base layer. You can see that on the right side. On the left side, I've started to add detail by lifting and dragging paint. I've also painted into the tendrils at the edge that I'd lifted out previously.


A detail of the previous photo.


A detail of the finished portrait.


Another detail of the finished portrait.

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- - - All art and images ©Ann Ranlett, unless otherwise credited. All rights reserved. - - -
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