314-504-3478
Saint Louis, MO
Sweet Whimsy
Ice Cream Truck Judy and I were walking around Greenwich Village a few years ago when we spotted a culinary amenity we no longer thought available. Mr. Softee. These rolling ice creameries were once common in our hometown, but at some point they stopped coming around....
read moreMusical Musings
ToonWare Some years ago I opened an online shop called ToonWareHouse (check out the menu bar, thank you). During some down time I created a series of musicians just for the fun of it. I didn't intend these to be for any particular purpose other than playing around....
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Wild Work
All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. There isn't a lot of detail about Dorcas (also called Tabitha) in Luke's narrative in the Acts of the Apostles. In addition to being a fine...
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Whimsical Comments
Yep, I know I just posted on Sunday evening, and the schedule is one post per week, but I have a favor to ask. My new website is now designed to receive comments on the blog page. This post is basically a test to see if the comments work, how convenient they are for...
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I’m Talking to You!
A current exhibit at our Missouri History Museum in St. Louis shows what our city was like in 1875. Elaborately displayed throughout several galleries, it is a sociological education about life's ups and downs in the late 19th century. St. Louis was the fifth largest...
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And Yet, I Don’t Really Like Peter Pan.
Please forgive me for using this image from last week, but a flying kid is still on my mind. My flying dream boy, along with my airplane and whimsical bird recollections, might erroneously suggest that I harbor a secret desire to revert back to childhood. Or maybe...
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I’ll Fly Away
I like things that fly. I like airplanes, I like kites, and I like birds. I really like birds. I don't study them, nor do I watch them like those pith-helmeted enthusiasts with binoculars. Truth is, I know little about them except that they are beautiful, jittery, and...
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Crouching Tiger, Talking Penguin
Tony the Tiger ©Kellog Company Are Saturday morning cartoons still popular? In my youth they were the indispensable kick off to the weekend reprieve from reading, writing, and arithmetic. My earliest visual and narrative memories are cartoons. Perhaps like you, I...
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Global Whimsy
On a recent Saturday morning in St. Louis, I headed to the Missouri Botanical Garden for their dazzling Chinese lantern exhibit, Magic Reimagined. Admittedly daytime is not when you're supposed to view a lantern exhibit, but I wanted to get a preview and the Garden is...
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Surprise! Delighting in the Unexpected.
Once when I was about twelve or so, I watched a couple of penguins peck at each other at our St. Louis Zoo. At the time I took it that they were fighting and I was interested in the outcome. Penguins are whimsical enough when they're doing nothing, but these two were...
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Why Whimsy?
In my inaugural post I promised to explore the value of humorous art for children's books, educational material and the like. The world in which I usually work, religious publishing, is a serious world. As well it should be, because the mission of my publishers is to...
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Art and Whimsy
Welcome to Art and Whimsy This is the first post in my new blog on the type of art I know best, whimsical children's art. I use whimsical in a rather broad way to describe children's art. The illustrations that fill my career can be categorized as juvenile, cute...
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Museums
On my FB page (and my FB business page: www.facebook.com/EdKoehlerIllustrator) I'm posting photos of museums that I've visited. Then I ask you try to identify the museum. It's for fun, but it's mostly to encourage visiting museums. I'm enriched by these institutions...
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Samson
This is a spread from a new book I illustrated for Concordia Publishing House. The book is about Samson and Delilah. This is the moment when Delilah gets Samson to reveal the source of his strength. Since the book is for children, I got to exercise freedom with...
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Happy Birthday, St. Louis! is a Best Seller!
I'm pleased to announce that Happy Birthday, St. Louis!, my children's book celebrating the 250th birthday of our fair city, is on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Publisher's weekly Best Seller list for Children/Young Adult books. Author Carolyn Mueller and I thank you...
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