Schloss Thun
I’ve sort of taken on a painting commission by suggesting I could paint a picture, as a birthday present, for a friend’s father in law.
The general subject is some recognizable place in Thun, Switzerland, where he grew up. As with most cities, towns and places in Switzerland, you can’t spit without finding an eye-catching view, so I randomly chose the Schloss (castle) on the hill as a subject out of thousands.
Mostly, this very small test painting was to determine composition and a palette, which is (approximately):
- burnt umber
- cadmium red light
- cadmium yellow
- Payne’s grey bluish
- Davy’s gray
- chromium oxide green
- various unlabeled Winsor & Newton greens
- pastel blue
- neutral tint
This is also an exercise in getting back into painting watercolours — which I haven’t done seriously in quite some time.
Working at this scale, everything is done with a size 0 (zero) brush. As the hours sunk into it increase, the angst level goes up as each feature is painted. I have to conciously tell myself to breath. For example, the profile of the Stockhorn — as a “back of a fist” shape — is well known and would draw the eye of any Bernese person, despite it being a background feature here. But then, I console myself that it’s only a test.
| Data | Description |
|---|---|
| Title | Schloss Thun |
| Artist | Derrick Oswald |
| Medium | Watercolour on 300g/m2 100% cotton cold-pressed paper |
| Dimensions (w × h cm) | 21.0 × 14.8 |
| Date | 2025 |
