Inspired by both the wonderful, tortured, awe-inspiring, apocalytic artist Bessie Harvey and my recent reintroduction to the sometimes profound, somewhat inane, but always diabolically interesting artwork of Noel Fielding, I decided to make some little tree spirit creatures from bits of wood collected from my lockdown walks.

The mix of styles doesn’t work for me – I should have picked either gnarly or cartoony, really. Anyway, it’s just a bit of fun, but then perhaps there is a dark and monstrous energy boiling away within these trees, just waiting to explode out as malevolent twig freaks.

As well as the sticks that form the body of each creature, I also used milliput to add details and appendages. I have never managed to use milliput effectively and I’ve always found it hard not to create a horrible crusty texture, but I thought that it would be an advantage in this case. My milliput is also quite old now, so I had to slice off the crusty outer edge of the stuff.

Now I just need to leave them out in the woods somewhere.

Grendel:

Gogmagog:

Pookeen: