I’ve been thinking of this, and gosh-darn, I’m just going to start.

If you’d like a hand-drawn post card, send me your address.

Every day I’m going to draw a postcard.  It might be a sketch.  It might be a doodle.  It might be in color.  It might be in pencil.  But I will draw one every day, and I will mail the postcards whenever I find a good post office.

Send your address to:   postcard (at) sutrovgallery (dot) com

If you have a friend who would like to do this too, let them know.

I’m just heading off to bed on my last day in Laos.

We were in Luang Prabang for two weeks, and I’m busy drawing up the adventures we had there.  Right now I’m in Phonsavan, home of the Plain of Jars and literal tons of rusting missile shells left over from the years the US bombed the region.

In the morning: a 10-hour bus ride, and northern Vietnam.  And I will draw postcard #1.

Here’s something for you in the meanwhile.

This is the Nam Khan, the smaller of the two rivers that border Luang Prabang.   (The other is the mighty Mekong.) The bridge in the painting is wooden, with creaky metal supports.  There’s no room to walk on the vehicle part of the bridge, so they tacked on an extra section for pedestrians, rather precariously.  Later, after I had walked across it, I think I overheard a tour guide say it was built by the Americans back in the 50′s…  eek.

I much preferred the bamboo bridge we took back across the river.  That one’s reconstructed after every rainy season, so upkeep is more regular!

** Your mailing address will only be used to send you your postcard.  I will email you to let you know when your postcard has been sent.  You may get an extremely occasional email from me (read once or twice a year) if there’s anything super-exceptionally new happening over at Maggie Paints the world.  But only if it’s very cool.

Here’s to Art and Adventure!

Ian, the Wizard of the Internet Cafe…

Until we sorted out the internet at our apartment, we often made use of the wifi cafe.   The place was full of characters, and Ian fit right in.

Yes, it’s been over 9 months in Southeast Asia.  Nine months of walking around whatever city we’re in, shopping at the local market, walking back to the current apartment, enjoying the sights and sounds of the neighborhood, cooking up whatever we purchased.   (We perplex the tuk-tuk drivers.  We always say “Sabai Dee!  Hello!”   We rarely accept a ride.)  All this walking gives Ian lots of time to say interesting things.

Our current neighborhood, in Vientiane, Laos, is around the corner from Patuxay, featured in the first panel.  It’s a giant Arch du Triomph-style monolith, built out of cement the USA donated for an airport runway back mid-century.  The rest of the neighborhood is a mixture of government office buildings and family-run restaurants that are buzzing at lunch time when all the offices empty out.  Lunch is serious business here.   In the evening, the restaurants double as open air living rooms as the families relax, wash dishes, and play cards.

And, a doodle of the two of us, wearing our hats.  We look a bit perplexed, like we’ve just arrived somewhere new.

New!  I’m posting short comics of stories from our travels.

I am still working on the main Maggie Paints the World Comic.  And that will begin updating regularly very soon.  In the meanwhile, there are so many other little stories that have happened while travelling.   The truth is, if I was’t such a sucker for color, the main comic would be much further along.  Instead, it’s coming along slowly, but beautifully.

Now, you will have the best of both worlds.

He came out to visit us in Vietnam, his first visit back since the war.  The modernness of Ho Chi Minh City amazed him, as did how little of the countryside had changed.  Except for the mountain.  What had been a place of bloody confrontation was now a temple, and what could be best described as an amusement park.

Here is a painting of one of the temples, with the misty mountain behind.  To get there we rode a ski-lift style gondola up the mountain through a torrential downpour.  To get back down the mountain you could choose the gondola, or the roller-loge.

Our favorite hotel in Ho Chi Minh quickly became the Blue River Hotel.  It’s a small guest house in a back alley of Pham Ngu Lau, a part of the city where many travellers end up.

The best thing about this little guest house?  The staff.

This is our friend Hien.  After watching me work on my comic she asked me to draw a portrait of her.

Ian had purchased an English-Vietnamese picture dictionary.  Hien sat with us for hours, teaching us to say a few words in Vietnamese.  (This is a tough language to pronounce!)  She enjoyed the book so much that we gave it to her.  We’ll have to go back for more lessons next time we’re in southern Vietnam.

Angkor Wat is still #1 on my list of places to revisit.  After Cambodia we were in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for a month, then back to Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Now we’re in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

We keep spending longer and longer in each location.  I’ve been creating a backlog of art (and comic!) to post.  It’s time I’m back on this site and putting it out there.  Regular comic updates coming shortly… as soon as I can wrangle a very busy web-designer to tweak his girlfriend’s site.

It was hard to pick the one view I’d spend my time concentrating on, and then just as I did, every tour bus at Angkor pulled up outside.  The scene changed completely.

What to do…spend my time at Ta Prohm sulking at everyone blocking my view?  That seemed like a waste, so I drew the scene as it was, with everyone in it.

The temple of Bayon is crowned with the monumental faces of King Jayavarman VII who built so may of the temples.  When you first see the faces, they’re towering over your head, but it’s possible to ascend to their level.  The sketch was done while we holed up under an archway during a rainstorm.

It soon dried up, though, and we braved the stairs, constructed to make you cower and climb in this realm of the gods.  Once at the top, the faces surround you.  Some silently meditate, and others have the open eyes of the omniscient god-king.

One day we went to some fantastic temples that were a bit further away.  I tried to paint at the first one, but there was no shade.  I’ll have to come back to Baneay Srei some day, preferably when the sun isn’t right overhead.  Luckily, the second temple, Banteay Samre, was beautiful in the afternoon light, and even better, we had the place all to ourselves.

Here is a view from Angkor Wat’s highest point, looking back towards the gate.  To enter Angkor you walk a causeway across a moat and step through the large archway you see in the center of the painting.  The outer structure is full of friezes and sculptures, and with the moat, forms a giant square perimeter to the complex.

Once inside, the main walkway leads you past two libraries to the central building, massive in its own right.  This again, is covered on four sides by even more intricate friezes.  Further in, there are more courtyards, areas which were sacred pools, and then up a steep, narrow staircase to the sanctuary itself.

There are times at the temples when you are surrounded by crowds.  But the place is so vast, it’s also possible to evade them.  One of Angkor’s libraries sits in a quiet inner courtyard.  We spent the middle of the day here with only a single visitor– a 4-year-old boy who had the run of the temples.  He motioned me for paper.  I thought he might do a drawing, but he was more interested in paper airplanes.  After all, at 20 feet up above the grass, this was the perfect spot.

Details from the miles of carved walls:

The demon king in the Ramayana, a single figure amidst the epic battle of his forces versus the monkey king, Hanuman’s.

Apsara–the beautiful Khmer nymphs cover any bit of wall they didn’t have other plans for.  Each is unique with amazing hairdos, costumes, and poses.

A little piece of the architecture, dancing apsara just under the ceiling.

You can’t be human and not be changed by Cambodia.

Angkor Wat is epic.

We had a 7-day pass, and I could spend another week again… or more… and I plan to.  Ankor Wat is actually the largest temple of a whole host of spectacular ruins in close vicinity to each other.  On our first day we concentrated on other temples, leaving the most monumental for later.  So here are several paintings and sketches from the surrounding temples.

When we return to Cambodia, we will be equally doing so for the people.  We became close friends with the waitress at our favorite restaurant, as well as our tuk-tuk driver Mr Sokhom, and much of the staff at the hotel.  Cambodia has given us a different–and more intense–sense of perspective than anywhere else on our trip.  I feel urged forward on the comic so I can tell the story.  (update shortly–I promise!)

This quick sketch is of the South Gate, where demons and gods carry out an epic game of tug-o-war with a giant serpent, thus Churning the Sea of Milk to create the nectar of immortality.  Behind are the towers, which are the actual gate you drive through.

As monumental as the temples are, they’re also carved with minute detail.  It’s this contrast in scale that makes it so hard to take it all in.  Here is one sketch of a frieze above a doorway.