Illustration books

Comics inspired by Frida Kahlo's life and art

Illustrated books for children and teens are listed at this page.

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"Frida Kahlo, an illustrated life" by Maria Hesse (http://www.mariahesse.es/frida/)

Originally published in Spanish in 2016, this comics book found an enthusiastic audience in the Spanish-speaking world, with some 20,000 copies sold in just a few months. The 2018 translation introduces English-language readers to Kahlo's life, from her childhood and the traumatic accident that would change her life and her artwork, to her complicated love for Diego Rivera and the fierce determination that drove her to become a major artist in her own right. Maria Hesse tells the story in a first-person narrative, which captures both the depths of Frida's suffering and her passion for art and life.

Check out the above link for a few images taken from the book.

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"Strange like me, Frida Kahlo" by Zen Pencils (http://zenpencils.com/comic/frida/)

Gavin Aung Than is a freelance cartoonist based in Melbourne, Australia. After working in the corporate graphic design industry for 8 years he quit his unfulfilling job at the end of 2011 to focus on his true passion, drawing cartoons. Gavin launched Zen Pencils at the start of 2012, a cartoon blog which adapts inspirational quotes into comic stories, and hasn’t looked back since.

Check out the above link for of his full cartoon episode inspired by Frida Kahlo.

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"Viva Frida" by Yuyi Morales (Author) Tim O'Meara (photographer) - Children's Painting Book - Sept. 2014

In the bilingual picture book “Viva Frida,” the author and illustrator Yuyi Morales presents a simplified version of the Frida mythology for younger children. Each page depicts a young Kahlo taking another step as she comes to realize that she is an artist and must create. The illustrations consist largely of Morales’s delicate stop-motion dolls of Frida, photographed against colorful acrylic backdrops by Tim O’Meara.

Frida wears flowers in her hair, beads and traditional Mexican embroidered dresses. On one page she dangles a marionette of a Day of the Dead painted skeleton next to the words “I play/Juego.” Another says “I dream/Sueño” as the top of the doll’s head, eyes closed, appears underneath painted dream figures of Frida soaring through the sky, with Morales’s homespun puppets of a monkey and a dog next to her.

There is plenty for young children to look at, though Morales’s Frida dolls do not capture much of a likeness beyond the artist’s famous unibrow, and they convey an un-Frida-like carefree quality. They seem meant to be a hybrid or fusion of Frida Kahlo and Yuyi Morales herself. “As a child, whilelearning to draw, I would often study my own reflection in the mirror and think about Frida,” Morales writes in an afterword.

(taken from the New York Times, check out the full article here)