I have a fear of animals in general, particularly dogs. This may be due to a traumatic experience I had as a child. I am afraid of any forms of contact with them and have this unrealistic (quite impossible as well) fear of their teeth biting me to death.
In my sketches, I first explored this by depicting a ferocious dog from my perspective. I am trying to hide the dog from my sight with my hand due to my fear. Next, I played with scale quite a bit, making the shadow of a dog look like a monster that is much bigger than I am (the silhouette of a girl).
In my final piece, I played with scale and shadows quite a bit. There is a hand shadow puppet of a dog’s head made from my hand against a light source. And at the other side of the picture, there is me trying to back away from a dog.
I do understand that my fear is irrational, and is nothing more than me thinking that the dog is baring his fangs at me when in truth the dog is just sitting there without posing any threat to me. I also enlarged the hand shadow puppet a lot to signify how small and afraid I felt in front of the dog, due to my fear of it. A spotlight is hitting on the picture plane to create enlarged and elongated shadows to give the sense of dread I feel whenever I am close to a dog.
Fear is made up by oneself; as represented by my hands creating a grotesque shadow from a harmless dog, therefore overcoming it has to start from oneself.
