SketchTravel in Cambodia

Water water everywhere

Imagine a river so big that it actually swells and flows backwards during the seasonal monsoon rains, creating the great inland sea known as Tonle Sap Lake. That is the Mekong River, composed of nine great tributaries - known locally as the Nine Dragon river delta.

This watercolor is of a little house surrounded on all sides by that powerful river. I lightly sketched this out in pencil, then added overall light background washes to give the page some color. Then I blocked in color overall, and finally added small details to trees and house until it felt finished. I am mainly a drawer. My watercolors often look awful and unfinished until I finally work them up with the last details. Even then they never look great. Only later once I put them aside for some time and then revisited them, do they seem passable.

Getting sick in Phnom Penh

In Phnom Penh I had a short afternoon open before flying up to the town of Siem Reap on Tonle Sap Lake, so I did a tour of the Royal Palace and out to the Killing Fields museum. Talk about a sobering place. I didn't do any sketches. My driver warned me to keep my camera down and out of sight in the car, or risk losing it. Next morning I had breakfast at a Chinese restaurant in the little hotel, and got sick on my flight to Siem Reap. Fortunately I got better pretty quickly. From the plane, the green countryside seemed like green velvet sparkling with a million jewels - so many little lakes formed temporarily from the rains. Siem Reap borders Tonle Sap Lake and is the gateway to explore the fantastic ruins of Angkor. It's hard for me to believe a place like this even exists. The symmetry and detail of Angkor Wat are a tribute to the genius of past cultures. I attempted to do a couple drawings at Angkor, but in most cases I gave up because the structures are over-the-top complex, and the throngs of people are a huge challenge for sketching.