Color is defined as the quality of an object or substance with respect to light reflected by the object. When using color in paintings it is useful to think about how the colors can be combined and/or modified to create effects like shadows and depth.
The painting above was created using complimentary colors. Complimentary colors are colors that "balance" each other out. Complimentary colors often contrast each other. As you can see in the painting, the colors used are blue and orange. These colors are complimentary colors because they are, when thinking about the color wheel, opposite of each other.
The painting is created by someone operating as "Steve" and i found it on a website called driver-art.co.uk.
The painting you see here, I have created myself, and I created it using analogous colors. For those who can't see it, the painting is supposed to look like a field at sunset, and is obviously created using different orange-like colors. Analogous colors are colors that are next to or very close to each other on the color wheel. The effects of analogous colors are said to be soothing, which I think is correct when looking at my own painting and other paintings using analogous colors.
Tone
For my tone analysis I chose this photo. As you can see the painting displays an orange on a blue surface. The orange is lit from the left. I can see this because the colors get a lighter and lighter tone towards the left and the orange casts a shadow towards the right. The shadow is exactly the same color as the surface, but it is painted in a darker tone. This shadow is probably the main reason that the painting is viewed as an image with depth. Another important reason for this is that is that the orange has a light tone on the left that gets gradually darker towards the right. Both of these effects are forms of shadow.
