Can't load image or change background to black on JFrame Game..

Good morning,

I"m working on a project for one of my classes and I wrote this bit of code here.. unfortunately there are a few problems with it. One of them being it's saying it's loading an image but nothing shows.. Even when I dont have an image in the directory, it captures or says it captures an image. The next thing is that I can't do any manipulation to the screen, such as changing the background to black.

This is my first jump into Java2D programming, I normally do Swing, but nothing like this.. so, I"m in a bit of a different area. I just want to know where I'm going wrong so I can keep going on this rather be stuck for the next week. Also, I would like people to explain to me why it's not working as my code compiles and it seems valid on my Linux System.

Oh.. and yes it IS a small Zelda clone, its just for a small project.. It will be changed later into something that isn't so copyright unfriendly.. Also, whoever downloads the attached files, will need to add an image as I deleted it from the project it was derived from.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Joseph

Zelda.zip