Illustrations
You can get a lot of information about a person just by watching what they do when they think they’re not being watched. Sometimes I’ll be in a meeting or rehearsal and feeling a little bored, so I’ll draw. It may start with a desire to draw a person. I never know who that person will be. Something about them strikes me. Attention is limited. We only have so much. But when it’s not being used – we have attention to spare. Some tasks don’t take a lot of attention. We can do other things until a word or movement tells us that we need to focus. I would often take sketchbooks to shows and concerts and sit in the back row of the theater and draw. Stories that come from characters in the drawings come to me in seconds.
In the novel, The Knights of Royal Pond, I sketched out the characters so that I could have nail down the personalities. This began as a full-length script for animation that worked its way into a novel and a dense audio production.
I’ve created whatever you might call my “work” in just about every environment. It might be a painting in a studio, or writing a new book in some hotel in San Fransisco or New York. What you create goes with you wherever you happen to be.
This charcoal poster was commissioned by the El Portal Theatre upon reopening. Many stars had performed at this theatre and supposedly, Cher served popcorn as a teenager during its period of being a movie theatre.
Charlie’s Heart was a pitch I made to present pre-surgical information to patients in order to reduce levels of anxiety.
The theory is that cartoon characters reduce the fear of death.
Below are a few bookcovers I’ve created over the years…, well, all but two. One is by artist, Sean Strain, and one by Butch Hartman. Many of these are audiobooks and the whole process takes months to complete. Oddly enough, it’s often the back cover that is the hardest to complete. My current belief is that the back cover should be mysterious rather than gushing with information. I believe it’s best to let the front cover do the selling.
In an effort to gamify psychology, I created this gameboard course for a typical college semester. Typically, the instructor will assign extra points based on creative projects along the path that incorporate the material presented in the course.
Paul Salamunovich spent a good part of his life in front of an organ conducting choirs and was the conductor of the Los Angeles Master Choral for ten years.
