I've gone back to pen drawings for now.  I want to work out more ideas before I get into color.

Fear of being tied up or bound: The fearful is flexible like a snake, able to bend in almost any direction.
He is equipped with various blades and claws, which are able to cut through many materials.

Fear of being bound: The feared wraps its prey in tentacles and consumes it slowly, using a proboscis to drain fluids.

 Fear of chins: The fearful at the top and the feared at the bottom.

I tried to rethink fear of the dark: the feared object.  I wanted it to have more of a connection with the fearful object, so here is my new design.  The predator is small, it has a phosphorescent appendage of its own that it uses to attract the fearful object.  It consumes the fearful's light-casting appendage and stabs out it's eyes, permanently blinding it.

Fear of hair: fearful top, feared bottom

 These don't have predator/prey counterparts, but here are some more (I was trying to be more spontaneous with the designs, but I don't think they work as well).
1. fear of meat (herbivore)
2. fear of sitting (it's a head with legs, so it can't physically sit)
3. fear of perfection (this is the feared object, and none of its structure is symmetrical)
4. fear of numbers (the only thing I could think of was having no identifiable body parts that could be counted)

Then just for fun I started combining phobias.
Fear of smiling......and snakes.

 

Fear of bats and geese:

More Phobia Designs....Beginning Color Studies

I need to figure out how these creatures interact.  Is it a predator/prey relationship?  Some of the creatures' anatomy directly inhibits their ability to perceive the feared object (ex. fearful of noise doesn't have ears) so I'm not sure how the feared object would be a threat.  I suppose I could make the feared creature have a way to directly attack what keeps the fearful creature safe (fear of the dark disconnects fearful of the dark's light), but once again I'm not sure how that would work for all of them.

I also need to decide if I want to do these as diptych paintings, or as a bestiary journal.  Either way I like the idea of cataloging their kingdom/phylum/genus/etc.

fear of the dark: the fearful

 ........the feared (I had a lot of trouble with this one.  I needed to come up with something that didn't emit much light, preferred dark environments, but is still somehow visible to the viewer.  I'm not sure if the silhouette is effective).

fear of gaeity: the fearful

 

 ..............the feared

fear of noise: the fearful

...............the feared (this one is my favorite)

Pen Sketches of Three Phobias

Here are some more designs.  I want to plan these out before I get into color.  Cassie made an interesting suggestion about making these into a children's book.

Fear of eyes: The following is a cave dwelling creature.  Naturally it is blind, so it has to rely on its other senses to function.

Fear of eyes from the other side:

Fear of hands: I have two designs for the "fearful" creatures, but they both have to compensate with prehensile appendages (tail, nose, etc.)

The "feared" in fear of hands:

Fear of pain:

Causes fear of pain:

Previous Sketches and More on Phobias

Here is a quick recap of my previous sketches.  New ones to be uploaded soon.

Also I thought out the phobia idea a little more.  I think if I choose to focus on that, I will be interested in viewing the problem from two sides.  Each phobia would have two designs.  One image would be what the phobia would look like as a creature (such as my emaciated "phagophobia" who is unable to swallow - aka the creature itself has the fear).  The other image would be all that a person with the phobia fears manifested in physical form.

More Brainstorming

My biggest challenge thus far has been narrowing down what I want to focus on.  I enjoy creature and environment design, so I know my ultimate body of work will be a combination of concept paintings and clay maquettes.

I am currently leaning towards two choices.  On one hand I am interested in exploring different phobias: thinking about their specific qualities, exploring their innate (or learned) nature - and then creating a series of creatures based on what I find.

One artist I have been looking at is Tony DiTerlizzi.  I love his style, his creativity with creating fantastical creatures, and the way that he catalogs them in books like "The Spiderwick Chronicles."

Another illustrator I enjoy is James Gurney, whose ability to combine imaginary content with realistic environments is phenomenal.  I feel he brings book illustration to a whole new level, creating work that would be at home as an oil painting in a museum.  Here is some of his work from "Dinotopia:"

In addition to phobias, I was also intrigued by what I found when researching medieval bestiaries.  This is related to my interest in cryptozoology, but I am fascinated by what is lost in translation when people work from brief (often inaccurate) descriptions of animals they have never seen before.  The result is just as fantastic as any description of Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster.

Here are some examples I found from bestiary.ca/

An elephant, a swordfish, a cricket, and an ostrich:

One challenge with this idea would be the fact that I already know what many of these animals look like.  I would have to study medieval descriptions of different beasts, and working solely from what was written come up with a design.  In some ways this might work well, given the fact that many of the descriptions are inaccurate: swordfish have wings, elephants can't bend their legs and fight dragons, and ostrich feet resemble deer hooves.