I am a landscape painter juxtaposing color in pastel to create the illusion of light.

Simultaneous contrast is the theory of how colors affect each other when placed side by side, altering our perception of their hues, even though the colors themselves remain unchanged.

Below are some color exercises making one color look as two.  In each set, the square in the middle is the same color.

      Orange surrounded by colors in Middle value range

      Orange surrounded by colors in Light value range

      Violet surrounded by colors in a Darker value range

As you can see some of the effects of simultaneous contrast are strong while others are weaker, when I paint I don’t always want a eye catching contrast, I use value and chroma along with hue to strength or weaken the effect.

“Cloud Study” I wanted a vivid blue sky, the subtle speckles of orange in the cloud and around the edges helps make that blue look Bluer!

This is a subtle effect using muted oranges and a few more chromatic oranges here and there.

“Sunset at the Ethanol Plant” In this example I used a much stronger chroma of orange to make the Violet-Blue Cloud appear Bluer. You might ask “why not use a blue cloud” instead of violet blue? The answer is the eye pleasing visual interactions of the orange having an effect on the violet blue. If the cloud were actually blue, the orange might make it appear too blue and destroy the emotion and the visual effect I sought.

When you learn to master these color interactions, you can use color to evoke emotions, create striking visual effects, and elevate the impact of your art.

This is just one example of using colors opposite on the color wheel, some other interactions might be: dark against light, warm against cool, chromatic against muted. 

Asking the important “What If” as you paint will yield beautiful results!