[By Erika Brandner in Santiago de Chile]
I am Erika Brandner, from Santiago de Chile and this is my first post as an Urban Sketchers Correspondent. Many thanks to the Urban Sketchers Editorial Team for giving me this opportunity.
Many sketches from this post has been made on a Sketchbook Leutchtturm 1917. Leuchtturm was a 2016 Manchester Urban Sketchers Symposium sponsor and they had a contest during the event. I took the challenge and made some pen sketches and also some with a bit of watercolor (the sketchbook is designed for drawing only but with care you can apply some light wash) Symposium ended and I had no clue about what had happen with the contest. A few days after I received a message from Leuchtturm asking for the name I wanted to have printed in my own 2017 agenda. I received a package with several sketchbooks in different sizes and gorgeous colors and the promised agenda! So what a best opportunity to begin using them as for this, my first post. Thanks Leuchtturm and Urban Sketchers.
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One of my sketches for the contest – the prize kit with the different Leuchtturm sketchbooks and the agenda |
So, a few lines about me: I am Erika Brandner, half Chilean and half Austrian. Graphic designer, I worked in the graphic and advertising industry for many years and in Sales and Marketing at 3M Company in Chile. Since 2007 I am an independent illustrator and artist. In order to have enough time and stability to continue creating (in latin american countries living from art is an utopie), during spring-summer season I work as a tour guide for German-speaking tourists in Chile. Tourists that travel to Chile are retired and include during their trip Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru. My beloved illustration subject is heritage and tradition and it combines wonderfully with tourism because it forces me to learn and study about our history, geography, architecture and culture and gives me the opportunity to draw on site during the travels and nurture my line of illustrated souvenirs and books from Chile.
In this, my first post, I will give a brief introduction of Chile:
Chile is the longest and narrowest country in the world with 4300 km’s long and a wide average of 177 km. It is common that people believe that the name Chile comes from “Chili” because its shape resembles a pepper. So funny and logical it might sound I have to say that this idea is wrong. It has nothing to do with the chili pepper although Chilean people love pepper and we eat it in our tasty Pebre, a ubiquitous Chilean condiment sauce prepared with cilantro, garlic, onion, olive oil, tomato and aji or chilipeppers.
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The real origin of the Name for Chile: it has nothing to do with the Chilipepper although Chilean people eat a lot of chili |
There are different theories for the name of Chile:
1) the Mapuche word for the TRILE bird
2) The name of an indian chief
3) The Quechua description for this cold and snowy territory (Quechua was the Inca language so for them this southern territory was very cold).
4) My favorite explanation due to its poetry and profound observation of our “Isle” identity:
“Chile, the end of the world or the remotest and deepest place of earth”
The length of Chile means that we have almost all climates and geography. Some tourists choose to go to the North with the driest desert in the worlds: Atacama. They like to visit the geysers, the astronomical observatories, the Moon Valley and the appealing village of San Pedro of Atacama. Other tourists travel to the South to visit Patagonia with its lakes and native forest and southerly the glacially fed lakes and Torres del Paine National Park. Other groups combine it with a visit to Easter Island with its Polynesian cultura and the extant monumental Moais.
But everyone have to pass through Santiago either to enter the country or to make internal connections. And there is were I live and work as a tour guide: the Central Region, where the capital Santiago is located and where 40% of the total population lives. In this simple map I have placed the most important places or better said, the more visited places from Santiago de Chile, mainly the historical center and the San Cristobal Hill. The squares show the images that illustrate this post.
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Turistic Routes in Santiago de Chile with featured spots in this post |
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Access to the Funicular at the Santiago Metropolitan Park or San Cristobal Hill |
My first tour of the 2016-2017 season was with an older couple. The man was a retired German engineer interested in Transportation so he traveled around the world taking pictures and visiting all ancient transportation systems.
With them we took the lifts and Trolleybuses in the port of Valparaiso, Unesco heritage site (but this city deserves its own
future post). So, in Santiago we took the funicular of the Santiago Metropolitan Park, best known as the San Cristobal Hill. It carries people to the 14m-high statue of the Virgen de la Inmaculada Concepción atop the summit and to sightseeing terraces like the one below: Bellavista Terrace.
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View of Santiago de Chile and the Andes Mountains from top of the San Cristobal Hill where the Funicular ends |
The couple departed from the Central Railway Station direction south. After leaving them I began this sketch. Opened in the 19th century, the station was only a barn and urban railway consisted of trucks of blood (a horse). Chile in the 19th century was totally influenced by France so the large metal structure we can wonder until today was made by the company “Schneider Co Creusot”. It has 16 frames or arches that form the vault and a top decorative front arch that holds at its peak a clock flanked of two taps. This station is Chilean historical monument.
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Santiago de Chile Central Railway Station: 0.1 Unipin fine line on paper on Leuchtturm 1917 Sketchbook |
A few years ago they installed this gorgeous carousel brought over from Italy. I began this sketches on site at the station, but I finished the detailed hatching during my countless hours in the subway traveling between my home and airport and hotels.
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Carrusel at the Santiago Central Railway Station: 0.1 Unipin fine line on paper on Leuchtturm 1917 Sketchbook |
To be a guide is funny, you have a lot of freedom and sometimes you spend your day at a beach with a coffee or a beer having fun with the tourists while everybody else is working in a closed office…. But it has also its not so funny side: the early wake ups, the time we spend bored at the airport waiting for our tourists and the long long time spend on public transport. I made these sketches at the airport. The first one show the tourguides with their raised arms and signs and the second one made very quick early in the morngin. This day I had waken up at 4AM and at 6AM I had already helped tourists with their hotel check out, transferred them to the airport, helped them at the counter and said them good bye…. it shows the bus that connects the airport with the center of the city and behind the Andes Mountains while it dawns.
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Santiago Airport: Tour guides with welcome signs and bus to the city while dawning with the Andes Mountains behind.
Erika Brandner is a graphic designer and illustrator from Santiago de Chile and founding member of Urban Sketchers Chile You can see her sketches and illustrations on her webpage: Erika Brandner Art |