Gabriel Pacheco's "The Jungle Book"

These illustrations for The Jungle Book are amazing.

They make me want to read Kipling's stories all over again. (I just came across these and had to share.)

I found a Spanish interview with Pacheco HERE on the challenge of creating new illustrations for The Jungle Book, and have used an auto-translator to assist in reposting some of it here:

The assignment was difficult. "A complicated challenge" qualifies illustrator Gabriel Pacheco... "And, well, you put Mowgli or Jungle Book in Google ... ". And search results overflowing with colorful images of the film adaptation of Disney. "But that was precisely what attracted me to illustrate a book with a great visual weight" explains via Skype from Buenos Aires.  

After the other, they began the problems . "The text they are so well made, has such workmanship, it is difficult to rework the characters because the text has solved. Worked great deal of time with this great conflict because the images I took out were superficial. They were not a reflection of the majesty of the text. "

After much rereading, came up with the solution: "I realized that I had not noticed the astonishment of the jungle Almost us goes unnoticed, but it is incredible that a child grows into it in the book, the weight of the jungle is.. amazing, so I decided to follow that path and work on the majesty of the jungle. I know it sounds simple, but it took three months of suffering come to that conclusion. I think it was nerves, anxiety draw a book with a very aesthetic view ... It was like drawing a Peter Pan "he explains.

You can read/see the first few pages of this edition of The Jungle Book HERE (it's in Spanish).

Gabriel Pacheco (Mexico, 1973), studied scenography at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico.  

His visual work has earned numerous awards in Spain, Italy, Mexico and Japan. He has been part of the sample Illustrators of Children's Book Fair in Bologna.  

He has been nominated Alma award three times.

You can find many, many more of Pacheco's illustrations on his website HERE, including some fairy tales you might know well, such as Beauty and the Beast.