Creating Art to Memorialize a Pet
- Kaaren Poole
- Jun 23
- 4 min read
An Artist's Greatest Challenge
As an artist, I can think of no greater challenge than creating art to memorialize a pet. I imagine many of you are in this situation, and I know it can be bery difficult. I'm hoping that sharing my experience will help you. Particularly, I've learned that it helps to wait until the time feels right. And even then, if you get stuck, just wait that out too. After all, there are things that just won't be rushed.
I’ve done paintings of other people’s pets and those who commissioned them were happy. But I was always nervous when working on them. Would I be able to portray the animal the way her owner saw her?
When Arthur passed, I wanted to memorialize him with a piece of art but I knew it would be more difficult than those commissions because I knew him so well. In fairly quick order I had a concept in mind. But it was so hard to get started. The piece would mean so much to me. Would I be up to it? It would be painful if the answer was no.
Beginning Can Be the Hardest Part
But I finally did get started. I decided to create an art journal spread and began in the easiest possible way—painting a background color. There’s no meaning in the colors I chose. I just liked them.
Next I worked on a drawing, using a photo I’d taken as my source.

I had so much trouble getting the drawing right that I finally resorted to the grid method—something so rare I can’t remember the last time I used it.
Finding Collage Elements
Strangely enough, I wanted to portray Arthur with chickens. I had an issue of “Chickens” magazine, which was the source for several “fussy cut” chicken images. Those images sat in a pile on the spread-in-process, waiting for me to gather the courage to approach the project for the next step.
Memorialize a Pet by Adding His Story
As it turned out though, the next step was writing! Art journalists often include writing along with images, and I'm no exception, though I usually use just phrases or words. Sometimes, I use foreign languages or other alphabets. In those cases, my objective s adding visual texture and perhaps a sense of mystery. Rarely, though, is text a major part of my spread. But in this case, I was inspired to write the story of Arthur’s last chapter and once I started writing, it flowed.
The story was four paragraphs. I printed the page and tore them out. Now I had all the collage pieces I needed, and it was time to return to the project.

Assessing and Refining
I was surprised that I liked the spread, as I’d been worried about the chicken clippings being such different sizes, and also worried that they would overwhelm the drawing of Arthur since he was just graphite, and fairly weak graphite at that.

To strengthen Arthur, I added a little black ink, especially in his eyes, nose, and mouth, as well as very pale blues and grays to add a little more form. Also, I added some fluff around his edges with a white Posca pen.
The transition between the white of the paper with the text and the background was too harsh, so I softened the edges with Neocolor II water soluble crayons.
Then, thinking I needed something else, I just began drawing stalks and leaves of grain in a band across the center, but behind the collage elements. I used a 0.1m black ink pen, but when I finished drawing them, I colored them in with a buff colored pencil.
Finally, I used that same colored pencil—and a few more—to add a bit of color to the chicks as well as lighten the darkest parts of the hens.
The white Posca pen was calling to me, so I added random dots, spirals of lines of dots (which I consider a signature part of my style), and two rows of dots around the border. At that point, I thought I was done.
However, as I look at it now, I think it needs one more thing: Arthur’s name in the upper right. I’ll ponder how to make something nice…
The Story and the Images are Equally Important
In this spread, the text is as important as the image. Unlike other spreads where I've included test, with this one, it was important to have all the text readable. But since you can't read it from the photos, I share it with you in this reading:
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