Study of Walcher Balgrave the Augur

A brown pen and ink drawing of a 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

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.

Study of Balladine's Bird

A black and white pen and ink drawing of a small bird with runic text

Study of Balladine’s Bird, 2025. Ink and gouache on vellum, 4 x 6 in.

The character of Balladine has changed drastically since I started the first draft of The Vaster Conspiracy. Originally named Claudine, she started off life as a stock housekeeper character who did little more than answer the door at Cairngorn House. Since then, her role in the story has expanded, to say the least. Her latest character development involves a new hobby: seeking out wounded birds that flew into the Underground City’s ventilation and exhaust fans and nursing them back to health.

This sketch of one of Balladine’s birds was based on a painting by Bolognese Baroque painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, an artist whose output varied wildly between sacred religious scenes and more informal genre paintings.