Study of Galena Wrapped in a Sheet

A brown pen and ink portrait drawing of an albino woman, with a sheet wrapped around her chest, with her eyes closed and an ambiguous facial expression of pain and/or pleasure.

Study of Galena Wrapped in a Sheet, 2025. Brown and sepia inks and gouache on vellum, 6 x 8 in,

The character of Galena was drawn from many different sources. Her endless quest for increasingly intense sensations—and the use of heroic doses of alcohol and substances to approach such a heightened state—was inspired by the painter Francis Bacon’s biography and interviews. I also modeled aspects of her personality and speech on someone I once knew who was simultaneously a psychopath and a masochist: quite a combo.

A line from William Gibson’s Count Zero was also inspiring:

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”

— William Gibson

Galena displays “inhumanity” through her inappropriate reactions to situations, whether it’s poking her nose into a painting she’s trying to figure out how to appreciate, laughing uncontrollably at a fistfight, or taking visceral pleasure in having large amounts of money stolen from her purse in an elevator car.

Balladine Cradling a Wounded Bird

Balladine Cradling a Wounded Bird, 2025. Charcoal, graphite, pastel, colored pencil, black chalk, black ink, and gouache on vellum, 9 x 12 in.

When I worked in the archives at Knoedler & Company, I would sometimes take my lunch breaks at the Frick Collection on the same block. Since I didn’t have much time to spend there, I had a route that would let me see five particular paintings. One of them was Ingres’s portrait of the Comtesse d’Haussonville.

I associate the Ingres portrait with my time at Knoedler, and the gallery’s downfall inspired the art counterfeiting plot of The Vaster Conspiracy, so I wanted to find a place to reference the Comtesse. Her distinctive face and blue dress just happened to fit the image I had of Balladine, so the humble housekeeper got a noble makeover, with each drawing of her referencing the Ingres painting in some way. Here, I used a cool Lamp Black pastel to contrast the warmer black tones of the bird and the rest of the drawing, suggesting a blue dress without using color,

Study of Renata During the Binge (Full Body Version)

A blue pen and ink figure drawing of a tattooed woman with black curly hair and a dazed expression kneeling on the floor with a liquor bottle next to her.

Study of Renata During the Binge (Full Body Version), 2025. Blue ink on vellum, 6 x 8 in.

Renata is a character who shows up in several stories. In the original draft of The Vaster Conspiracy, I gave her a brief cameo in which she is passed out drunk in a banquette next to Dr. Rasteban at the Breslin Bay Old Colonist’s Club. In the second draft, I wrote a scene in which Vaster and Renata go on a binge together, with Vaster interrogating her about Dr. Rasteban’s dubious medical experiments until he gets so intoxicated that he forgets what they’re talking about.

The black square tattoo on Renata’s shoulder is a cover-up. This raises the question: if the rest of her body is covered with demonic sigils and arcane talismans, what was so dangerous that it needed to be completely blacked out?

The composition of this study was inspired by Caravaggio’s strong use of the edge as a framing device, as seen in paintings like Self Portrait as Bacchus and Conversion on the Way to Damascus.

Study of Walcher Balgrave the Augur

A brown pen and ink drawing of a stern-looking man with streaky white hair wearing black robes staring at the viewer

Study of Walcher Balgrave the Augur, 2025. Brown ink, Conté, colored pencil, and gouache on vellum, 4 x 6 in.

In The Vaster Conspiracy, Walcher Balgrave serves as the shadow of the protagonist, art counterfeiter Vaster Vrain. An astrologer/fortune teller with an uncanny ability to remember flashes of possible futures, Walcher seeks to control the course of history by manipulating people and events according to his predictions and those of his blind sister, Elsasara, who has even stronger prognosticative abilities. This is in direct contrast to Vaster, who becomes obsessed with hallucinating events from the past to solve a deeply personal mystery.

Vaster and Walcher shadow one another in other ways, too: while Vaster dresses in flashy designer clothes he can barely afford, Walcher wears the humble ink-dyed robes of an augur despite his wealth; while Vaster has a self-destructive taste for Sperrin whisky, Walcher exclusively drinks medicinal Kinarin tonic.

Study of Balladine in Brown Ink

A brown pen and ink drawing with highlights in white gouache of a woman wearing large round glasses and with her hair in a plaited braid, giving a slight smile.

Study of Balladine in Brown Ink, 2025. Brown ink and gouache on vellum, 4 x 6 in.

This is the first work that I’ve made in color since August of 2023. According to Pantone, brown is a color, right?

Balladine changes her look from time to time: I wanted to see how she looked with her hair worn back rather than parted in the middle as usual.

I went on to develop this into a charcoal, mixed media, and gouache drawing. See my post about it or the finished drawing.