This is a digital painting, done completely from scratch in Photoshop CS3, using a Wacom Graphire tablet. If there is enough interest, I will post a progression of this, showing the initial sketch and progressing through to the completed piece.

I was initially going to wait and not post this until I had added color, but as I was adding colors to this last night, I felt that it should be posted in black and white since Creature from the Black Lagoon was filmed in black and white. I will still add the colors and post the color version later, but for now this seemed appropriate as it is.

This piece is a tribute to actor Ben Chapman, who played the role of Creech in all of the "out of water" shots. Ben passed away recently (February 21st, 2008). I was planning to do a mural of the creature as a body paint prior to the news of Ben's death, but I wasn't able to get it finished. During my search for a good reference photo for that project, I started doing a sketch in Photoshop, and it grew into this painting.

Creature from the Black Lagoon is and likely always will be my all time favorite horror movie. I can watch it over and over and enjoy it every time!

Hope you all like this one- I was very happy with the way this one turned out!