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Ragtag Cinema Cat T-Shirts

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I recently created a couple T-shirt designs for Ragtag Cinema, Columbia, Missouri’s awesome nonprofit art house movie theatre. Cats have been on the mind of the Ragtag staff ever since they screened the film Kedi last spring, so they wanted to see if I could design something related to cats & film. These are two of my favorite subjects, so this project was really exciting to design!

You can buy the shirts in person at the Ragtag Box Office–they sell for $15, but they are $12 for Ragtag members. You can also buy the ticket-ball design online. The shirts were printed locally by One to One Print Shop and are 100% soft cotton from Bella + Canvas.

(updated 05-16-19)

Arnold Drake: A Galaxy of Comic Creations

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Photo: Arnold Drake at the New York Comic-Con in 2006. Photo credit: Edward Liu/toonzone.net

The highly anticipated sequel to the film “Guardians of the Galaxy” arrives in theaters this year, but you may not know that one of the co-creators of the comic-book team, writer Arnold Drake (1924-2007), was at one time a University of Missouri student. Drake came to the college under unusual circumstances though. Continue reading →

Outdoor drawing

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I attended the Boonslick Art and Music Crawl on July 24th. The organizers encouraged some plein air drawing by regional artists, and I got in on the act. The sketch above is a rendition of the Hotel Fredrick in downtown Booneville that I completed during the day.
I got interested in the event after picking up a brochure with drawings of little rats on it that looked incredibly like my Izzy the mouse character. Apparently these rats are the mascots for the event organizers, the Turner Hall River Rats for the Arts. The rats were originally designed by Tim Nadeau, and the cool poster for the event was drawn by Holly Hughes. The rats even look so much like Izzy that one of my friends saw the poster for the event and thought I had drawn it!

Grant School visit

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Last month I was invited to tag along a few hours with local artists Debra Zemke and Katy Ottinger to offer some artistic help to some fourth graders at Grant Elementary School. The kids were putting together books based on things they had written, and some of them needed help with their illustrations. It was awesome seeing their stories in progress, and helping them with some drawing tips. I can’t wait to see their final books!

True/False documentary film fest 2010

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This year I was again a volunteer for the True/False film fest that took place last weekend. I was on the screening committee, so I watched a bunch of documentaries in the last few months and wrote summaries of them. I saw a lot of good stuff throughout the process, but one of my favorites was the experimental short “Loop Loop”, which made it into the “Someone to Watch Over” program at the fest. Check out the full video of Loop Loop online.

True/False film fest 2009

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Director Darius Marder talks about his film Loot at the Macklanburg Theatre.

This year I was a volunteer for the local True/False film fest, which just took place last weekend. I was on the screening committee, so a few months ago I watched a bunch of documentary movies and gave them a critical eye. I spent a fair amount of time brushing up my writing skills by writing summaries of all the films I watched. Most of the films I screened didn’t make it into the fest, so I ended up watching way too many films during the fest last weekend.

My favorite film that I saw at the fest was Loot. It was a great movie to watch with an audience; funny, poignant, and unpredictable. To top it off, the Q & A afterward with the director was just as interesting as the movie.