The Creature as portrayed by Ben Chapman (on land) and Ricou Browning (underwater) from Jack Arnold's 1954 classic "Creature from the Black Lagoon."

When I told the Warden that I was going to do a portrait of The Creature she jokingly said "You better not screw it up."

(I'll leave it to you to decide if I did...)

You see, The Creature from the Black Lagoon is her favorite monster, and in fact comes in a very, very close second as mine... (If only a radioactively enlarged Creature and Kong could actually battle it out for the top spot!)

I'm not sure exactly what that says about me that my two favorite monsters are ones that were better off on their own, before mankind came along and ruined everything, but maybe we'll explore that some more some other day...

I'd like to dedicate this one to her. She has been an invaluable asset, not only suggesting monsters to do, but she is my other set of eyes. She has saved so many of the pieces on this site by giving her honest opinion and priceless advice. Without her you all would have suffered through a lot of portraits that where almost (but not quite) finished. So we all owe her a great big thanks!

Here's an interesting piece of trivia about "Creature From The Black Lagoon"

The film has been immortalized in paleontology circles. When Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge discovered a fossil amphibian in what was once a fetid swamp, she named it Eucritta melanolimnetes, which is Greek for "the creature from the black lagoon."

Be sure to check out Ben Chapman's site:
[link]

And Julie Adams site:
[link]

As always, limited edition prints of this and all my other work are available for a measly $25.00 from my store. Get 'em while they're hot!
[link]