Long Lake Ranch

[Rodger MacMunn]

Long Lake Ranch is a 2000 acre spread of heavy mixed woodland, open meadows, creeks, marshes, some decent hayfields & close to a mile of shoreline on Long Lake. The owners have retired from their other "on farm" ventures & are now just boarding a few horses & concentrating on their herd of Charolais.
They still love their horses .... they're way better than an ATV when your fixing fence, because the ATV won't come when you call it...........
The sign? This is made from 1.75" Corafoam 15lb ( Duna) & painted with Porter acrylics. It's about 27" square. The "silver" leaf is actually 19karat Caplain gold. Unlike other alloys of gold, which are cut with silver, Caplain is alloyed with palladium, which dominates the final colour. There's little if any cost saving, but it's more malleable & hence easier to work with than either pure palladium or aluminum leaf.
Sorry about the "misty" photo .... I took it early in the morning & a wee bit of fog lingered.

[Frederick Skelly]

That's a beautiful sign. It will a tribute to what sounds like a pretty great place. In what state is the ranch located?

[Paul Lawrence]

Rodger, I'm curious about your graphic of the rider and the dog. When you choose a graphic like that, do you go back to the customer for a photo or use a stock graphic?

[Rodger MacMunn]

Frederick, they're in Ontario, about 30 miles NW of the east end of Lake Ontario. Kingston is the closest city.
Paul .... this is a long answer to a short question. I've know these people for most of my life & they've been good customers. When they retired from the "trail ride" part of the business, their daughters hired a professional photographer to take some pics. This one happened to get posted on FB, & I knew right away I had a plan for it. I contacted the photographer & purchased the rights to use it for reference.
( Keith, I hope you don't mind me posting this ...I'm not trying to sneak in an advertisment but we can talk about that later)
I do sign finishing workshops twice a year & I'm always looking for pictorials that will challenge, but not frustrate, those who are afraid of a paintbrush. This was perfect .... I posterized the photo in CorelDraw, & then just needed to incorporate it into a sign. I have to make one for my students to reference anyway, & this is it. Lynn & Leslie have bought thousands of dollars in signage from me over the years, & now their kids are becoming customers, so they're getting this for the cost of the post structure only, & will be going by the ranch gate. BTW, this sign would sell for about $725 US.

[Paul Lawrence]

The photo / graphic was a great choice, and I see that it has a real connection to your customer, too. Great foresight on your part!

My library of photographs is now going to get some more scrutiny. I just might find a good one!

[Keith Outten]

Rodger,

Thats a beautiful sign, it seems that I am going to have to learn how you posterize photos in CorelDraw. I can't say that I am familiar with the technique.

[Rodger MacMunn]

Keith, just use the "trace" tool. It will break up a bitmap into blocks of colour. I use it a lot to get file sizes down, for one, & to simplify photos for painting. And, you can segregate colours to cut out on your plotter & just use them for reference points. One of the most difficult things in doing a pictorial is getting the size of the elements correct. If you have the important ones sized, the remainder become relatively easy.