My dear Clare is once again not turning 44 so I flew out to help her celebrate this not-numerically-accurate birthday! And because I'm not a complete monster, I made her a birthday gift in the form of a portrait of her beloved cats, Sara and Molly.

I combed through our archive of texts to harvest but a fraction of the cat photos she's sent me over the years, then I puzzle-pieced them together to form a template for my drawing.

Digitally, I sketched over the photo collage so I could test out how to block in the more solid blacks before I committed them to actual ink.

Once I'd established an acceptable equilibrium between the blacks and whites, I then used my monitor like a lightbox to re-trace my digital drawing onto nice paper with a light blue pencil and began crosshatching approximately one million skritchy black cat hairs.

Obviously, every pet owner servant is delighted to receive art of their cherished companions, regardless of the quality, so the real test for me as an artist was going to be whether Sara and Molly approved of how I captured their essences.

They loved it!