Valve Job

This digital painting of a saxophone was created in Painter 6. My work generally leans toward the photo realistic, but I wanted to also bring abstract elements to this painting, so I chose an angle and perspective of the horn that doesn't immediately identify it as a saxophone. I used the valves and the horn's bell to create variations on a circular theme and the jumble of connecting rods and other hardware to add a busy counterbalance to the abstraction.

The original image is 2500 pixels wide painted at 250 pixels per inch and consumes about 30 MB of disk space.