Moooooooar Jungle Book

Since I tend to fixate, here's some quickie Jungle Book watercolor sketches I did after finishing the painting.

Red Dog is my favorite Mowgli story. It's got all the major players, an exciting new enemy, and shows off what a cunning little creature Mowgli has grown up to be. And contains my favorite line in all the stories:

"Howl dogs! A Wolf has died to-night!"

But of all the Pack of two hundred fighting dholes, whose boast was that all Jungles were their Jungle, and that no living thing could stand before them, not one returned to the Dekkan to carry that word.

Akela was pretty unquestionable rad. He knew more about men than anyone, led the Pack for better than a decade, and offered to let his mutinous pack kill him without a fight in exchange for Mowgli's freedom. He kept kicking ass up till his excellent death fighting the dhole. Rock on Akela.

Mang The Bat, who didn't actually do anything in the books, but was mentioned in the Night-Song in the Jungle, which is good enough for me.

And OF COURSE Bagheera, whom I love, because he is a cocky prick, which I suppose comes of being born among men. Plus, it makes his love for Mowgli that much more AWWWWW.

Brothers, That was a Dog's Death

Growing up I read a lot of Victorian-era & earlier lit. Most likely because books in the public domain and my parents both turned up a lot at garage sales. At any rate, the Mowgli stories are one of my favorite things ever, ever. I've read each one at least a hundred times-whenever I imagine what it must be like to be juuuuuust about to shuffle off the mortal coil, the thought that someday, I'll have read The Jungle Books for the last time always comes to my mind.

Looking at the sketch, I feel like this painting was supposed to be a lot more lowbrow than it actually turned out. Also, Shere Kahn is meant to be sort of a cross between a skinned hide and actual tiger, but he ended up looking like he was just chilling out on Mowgli's head.

Not sure why I do such detailed sketches when I'm clearly gonna ignore them as soon as I grab a brush.

CAN'T SLEEP. MUST PAINT.

Finally done. I forgot how long it takes me to paint stuff. I ALSO forgot to scan it before sealing it, so I couldn't get a great shot of it due to reflections and so on. Win some, lose some, I guess; it has been a long time since I painted.

Jungle Book sketches

The Jungle Books are some of my all-time favorite words on paper, and I admit the Disney movie has some pretty amazing bits despite taking a gigantic dump on the stories its based on.