Golden Retriever Silhouette Templates: 20 Designs in Solid, Outline and Stencil Versions

These Golden Retrievers are drawn as shapes, not detailed sketches, and the breed shows in the edges: feathered tails, fringed legs and a soft, wavy line along the chest. The fur is rounded into coarse tufts rather than fine hair, so each outline stays readable at craft sizes.

Twenty goldens, most of them busy

Nine of the twenty show a golden busy at something. One carries a tennis ball (05), one a flying disc held edge-on in its mouth (06) and one a stick (17). There’s a run (03), a jump with the front legs reaching forward (12), a play bow (16) and a dog rolling on its back with its legs in the air (18). Design 13 swims with its head, back and tail showing above simple wavy water lines, and 11 sits up to give a high five, paw pressed against a human hand and forearm.

The calmer designs are a sitting dog (01), a standing profile (02), a dog resting with its head up (04), one looking back over its shoulder (07), one curled up asleep (14) and a crossed-paw rest (19). Rounding it out are a fluffy sitting puppy (08), a front portrait and a side portrait (09 and 10), a golden sitting inside a heart frame (15), and an adult touching noses with a puppy (20).

On the tennis ball design, the ball sits so close to the muzzle that the solid and stencil versions show it only as a small bump. If you need the ball to be obvious, the flying disc or the stick reads more clearly.

Three versions and what each one is for

• Solid is the filled silhouette. Most designs are one plain shape. A few, such as the portraits, the puppy, the sleeping dog and the crossed-paw rest, keep thin openings for fur and facial details.
• Outline traces the same dog as a narrow closed band, good for tracing or for a light line drawing. Only the portraits and a few detailed poses carry lines inside the body.
• Stencil is the one to read twice. It’s a negative: a black rectangle, about 7.8 x 6.2 inches in the DXF files, with the dog cut out of it. You keep the black and remove the dog shape. Small bridges hold the inner islands, like the eyes and nose on the portraits, in place, so the painted result shows the dog with a few thin gaps running through it.

The guide says only the stencil was checked digitally to stay one connected panel. The solid and outline versions may include separate pieces.

Sizing and printing

The guide aims for bridges and outline bands of at least 1 mm (0.04 in) when a design is about 6 inches wide. That doesn’t hold once you shrink a design, so check the thinnest bridges again at your size and enlarge the busy ones, like the front portrait. The 4-up and 6-up pages repeat one design four or six times for printing, and they aren’t meant as a guide to small cuts. Nothing in the set has been test-cut or test-sprayed, so try one on scrap first.

Each of the 18 PDFs follows the same order, with a cover on page 1 and designs 01 to 20 on pages 2 to 21. The art files sit in svg, png and dxf folders, each split into solid, outline and stencil, with matching numbers and names across all three.

Questions

Which part of the stencil do I cut away?

The dog. In the stencil files the black rectangle is the material you keep, and the white or see-through dog shape is the opening you remove. Paint sprayed through it leaves a dog shape broken by thin bridge lines.

Which PDF should I print first?

Start with the 1-per-page outline PDF in your paper size and print at Actual Size / 100%. Page 1 is a cover, design 01 is on page 2 and design 20 is on page 21 in every file.