Our Lord and Destroyer Cthulhu in its natural habitat. I usually only see Cthulhu depicted in or near the ocean, the way it was introduced in the original Call of Cthulhu story. However, despite its cephalopod-esque design, Cthulhu is not truly an aquatic creature. While it may reside on earth in the story, Cthulhu is essentially a cosmic deity, born in the vacuum of space. 

while creating this image I was inspired by those beautiful Hubble Telescope photos of nebulae, particularly the Pillars of Creation. I was also influenced by religious imagery, Cthulhu is, after all, a deity.

I had a lot of fun with this one, I will likely explore Cthulhu and its buddies more in the future. lots of potential character/creature design approaches in Lovecraft. This is the latest version of this image, just for fun I went back and refined some of the details and added some more tentacles to his face. Let me know how you think it compares to the previous edition and if you have any suggestions for how to improve this one. Thanks!

This is the previous version of the image that I had published on this site.