Merry Christmas and Happy Year!

From my family to yours; may you have a most wonderful holiday and the brightest of New Year.

Merry Christmas!

Wee Kirk

Our church has a children's ministry named "Wee Kirk". It's name means "Little Church" and, like so many things in our town, has a Scottish heritage to it. So I thought I would keep that in mind when I was asked to design a logo for the program.


Here is the pencil drawing that everyone liked. It has our little guy leaning on a sculpture of a tree stump with a scroll that is a featured monument on the lawn of our church.


The next step was creating an ink line drawing that could be used on stationary, black and white signage and such. The inking was done digitally in Adobe Illustrator using the pen tool with the bezier curves. I could have inked this by hand with a sable brush and scanned it to the computer and then "tweeked" and "tweezed" it from there, but honestly there are days I just don't want to deal with all those steps and there is something to be said for doing it directly into the computer from the get go when that's where the piece is ultimatly heading. It's not necesarily easier or harder inking digitally. It involves a different mindset and it offers you a different set of options while demanding you adhere to the same artistic pricples that would apply to traditional inking.

And here we have the final color of our guy. I took the paths that were created from the digital inking and brought them into Photoshop to use as the basis for the illustration. I mostly used the airbrush tool and standard brushes to get the final look.
I think he came out alright.

Tarzan

I've been going through some old drawings and I came across these little thumbnail sketches I had done while I was working on the Tarzan style guide at DCP. The image of the professor and the apes was idea for merchandise art work that was never used. The other four were ideas for collectible prints for Disney Art Classics. I believe the one with Young Tarzan and Terk riding the bird was eventually picked and illustrated for the print.
I always liked these little idea drawings. They are fun and lively.

LOGOS

Sorry that it's been a while since I have posted anything. I've been busy with lots of work but its all stuff that I can't mention because of confidentiality.
But I can post this!
My wife and I are involved in a youth ministry at our church, It's called LOGOS. It's quite an amazing and rewarding program from my perspective both as a participant and as parent seeing my kids learn and grow with God. When I first volunteered with the ministry I thought it was just something small and exclusive to our church. But I recently found out just how big and widespread the program is when my wife and I attended a seminar in Chicago recently. Apparently the program has been in existence for about 45 years and around 3500 churches use it. Go figure! There were so many wonderful folks from different congregations from the south and mid-west and we were all there for a common purpose to help expand and nurture the faith in our children and families through LOGOS. Just before this event, one of my pastors asked me if I was interested in designing a crest for a LOGOS conference he was overseeing that was geared specifically for teens. It needed to be simple and to convey the theme of the conference which was "Dance before the Lord".
So here's the design.

The new website!

Well everyone my new website is finally up and running. I would like to thank Guy Michael and the staff at Sync Creative for putting it all together for me. I'm sure glad they did it because, web-wise, I have no idea what the heck I'm doing!
Check it out here: Carlo LoRaso Studios

AV123

Happy New Year everyone.
I've always had a thing for stereo equipment. I remember hanging out in the local Hi-Fi shops as a kid and well into my teens, listening to beautiful music coming out of all these great speakers and gear that I could never afford. I spent hours listening, reading and asking questions of store owners regarding all things audio. It was all great fun. In the last couple of years in my search for new speakers for our home theater I came across an internet direct company called AV123. They had a nice little website with beautiful looking speakers, a very reasonable customer return policy and, when I called their office, spoke with a really knowledgeable and swell guy named Sean Parque. Talking with Sean for about half an hour reminded me of those great, informative conversations I had in my Hi-Fi hangouts years ago. It was also clear that Sean wasn't blowing smoke, he knew what he was talking about. So I went and took a chance on a whole home theater package from this little company and I was rewarded with a truly great looking and great sounding system. If that wasn't enough their customer service has been really outstanding. They've been always available to answer questions or concerns and when I had a minor issue with a speaker and the wayward foot of my 4 year old, AV123 sent me a replacement speaker driver under warranty no problems. Now Sean has gone on to do other things at AV123 like getting their new website up and running and I was very surprised and happy when he asked if I would like to do an illustration for their home page. So here's the illustration and here's how to find AV123.