Comment “June” if painting barns, sheep, and hills in the English countryside sounds like your kind of week.
Next June, I’ll be leading a 5-day plein air workshop in rural Yorkshire — think stone walls, winding footpaths, working farms and SHEEP! 🐑 We’ll paint all of it together: the barns, the land, the light, and the animals as they show up.
We’ll spend our morning in the studio, then spend the rest of the week painting on location — learning how to simplify, respond to the light, and bring clarity and confidence to your work. There’ll be home-cooked meals, easel-to-easel guidance, and plenty of room to take your time and enjoy the process.
The group will be small, so each painter gets the attention they need.
Comment “June” and I’ll send you the details — I’d love to paint with you there.
So, if it was up to me, all of my paintings would be life-sized portrayals. I love painting things at a scale that makes them feel real when you walk into the room with them.
This is my biggest sheep painting yet.
In a dim room, it feels like there’s a real flock in the studio.
Adam Clague is giving a FREE live painting demo this Tuesday at 10am CST 🎨
But first… we need your help.
Which painting should Adam paint live?
🥑 Avocado
🍇 Grapes
Just comment:
“avocado” or “grape”
and I’ll send you the free sign-up link so you can join us live (or watch the replay later).
My friend Adam Clague is famous for painting glowing citrus… So naturally, we decided to make him paint an avocado, or maybe a grape!
Next Tuesday at 10am CST, Adam is giving a FREE live painting demo, and honestly, I can’t wait to watch him explain his way through a new subject.
Let us know in the comments if you want to come.
When I started this portrait, I knew I wanted to leave that orangey tone from my transparent red wash showing through.
I was thinking of this as a vignette — really just focused on the head.
But as I worked into it, everything started to feel a little too warm.
Golden sheep.
Pink nose.
Orange background.
It was all skewing to the same warm temperatures.
So I knew it needed a little bit of the opposite.
I mixed viridian with some white and laid a stroke along the back — and that was the moment it started to come together.
From there, I pushed it just a bit more.
A few desaturated greens in the fleece at the top.
Some darker viridian down in the shadows on the left.
None of that is in the reference.
It’s just something I’ve learned to look for.
If a painting leans heavily in one direction, it usually needs a quiet note of the opposite somewhere.
I think of those as stowaway colors.
They’re not meant to be obvious.
But they’re often what make the whole thing work.
I thought that you might want to take a closer look. That’s the problem with sharing pictures of big paintings on Instagram—can’t see the detail. #tjcunningham #oilpaint #fineartwork #nature
The only colors you need to create a full color painting are yellow, red and blue. 🟨🟥🟦
Here are three of my paintings created with three different sets of yellow, red and blue.
***Plus white. Oil painters always need white. Doesn’t count as a color, though. 😉
Want to watch the full painting demo on YouTube? Let me know and I’ll share the link.
This piece didn’t start with “how do I paint a dog.”
It started with one simple question: what are the biggest shapes, and how do they relate?
I committed to the dark mass early, blocked the entire head as a single shape, and let the light get carved out gradually. No fur. No details. Just structure and value doing the heavy lifting. Once those relationships were working, the features began to place themselves.
The background wasn’t an afterthought—it helped define edges and push the form forward. And in the end, restraint mattered more than polish.
The goal isn’t subject expertise.
It’s having a process you can trust—one that lets you paint anything.
