When I was in high school, my friend Lisa called one evening and asked what she warned was a strange and random question. “If the sound of a French horn was a color, what color would it be?” It’s a strange question, yes, but one that I found interesting. In music, we often talk about tone in terms of color. We talk about sounding warmer, brighter, cooler, darker tone. In terms of orchestration, sometimes we talk about bringing in different instruments to change the color of the piece. It’s not something that anyone ever taught me, but I’ve heard it throughout my musical experience, and it makes sense.
I wanted to do a painting for my brother–a trombonist–so I thought about the colors of a trombone’s sound. They play dark, mournful things, and bright jazzy things. E.J.’s tone is warm and rich with lots of depth, sprinkled with brassy brightness on the top. It’s a versatile instrument with a huge range.
I chose to do an abstract sketch of a trombone, trying to make it pop off the canvas. I painted the entire background with a palette knife, letting the paint create its own texture. (I used oil paints rather than acrylics.) Here’s the result.
Jessica Lada 
I love seeing your art! In my lit studies we also talked a lot about tone and tenor in narrative. It always made me think about music and gave me all of these visual cues. I think that is why I learn languages so quickly. I actually see them in my brain as an image, not a word. I did the same to memorize music.