Color Mixing & The Art of Tone Value & Scheme

This is all well and good for night scenes, but what about daytime scenes? A compressed value scale is still important, but rather than weighting the scale to the dark end, weight it more to the middle. (We rarely see true darks in daytime.) When you start to paint, mix your lightest mixture first and make sure that all your other mixtures sit far enough away on the scale from that light-value mixture to create a real contrast. Full Article

Just as the manipulation of values can accentuate light, the juxtaposing of colors can dramatically increase the illusion of brilliance.The Impressionists were masters at creating a sense of light by using color cleverly. If you examine their paintings, you’ll see that the trick really comes down to the effective use of complements and near complements. Place a small light spot against a dark, complementary color field, such as light orange against deep blue, and the effect can be stunning (below). Full Article