Here's a labeled SDSS image including all the various VV designations (there are 5 total). These notes are from May 2012 in Jimi's scope --

At 488x, the southwest component (VV 118b) of NGC 3690 appeared as a very bright, elongated, irregular knot of high surface brightness. Contains a very bright, quasi-stellar nucleus. The northeast component (VV 118a) is the larger of the merged interacting pair and appeared bright, moderately large, ~1' diameter, small very bright core. A very low surface, asymmetric halo extends on the northwest side of the bright pair. The southwest component is generally misidentified as IC 694, which is described below.

VV 118d/e, probably HII regions, are just 45" NW of NGC 3690 (just outside the halo). Occasionally an extremely faint and small glow popped in this position, 6"-8" diameter. IC 694, ~1' NW of the bright pair, was easily visible as a fairly faint, slightly elongated glow, 15"x12", weak concentration.

PGC 35345 (the brighter component of Arp 296) lies 2.6' NE. It was also a direct vision, fairly faint glow, fairly small, oval 4:3 NW-SE, 24"x18", increasing to a very small brighter core. I didn't look for 18th magnitude SDSS J112850.64+583336.7, the extremely faint companion 2.1' SSE.

NGC 3690 field.jpg