I found this dried root of hogweed on a hilltop walk with friends. It’s been in my studio for quite a while now, and has given birth to many images. Upended on its stalk the root becomes a tree. I’ve written about using it as a model in a post made last year, but since then there have been even more manifestations of it.
I made a toy theatre out of building blocks, and stood the root on the stage to make an image I titled Day of the Triffids in honour of John Wyndham’s novel about an invasion of killer alien plant-life.
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I’ve drawn it extensively for my picture-book of Hansel & Gretel, due out this summer. Here it is in a detail from a preparatory image of a witchy forest drenched in moonlight.
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My friend, artist Phil Cooper, has made a model of it in preparation for a film we plan as a book-trailer.
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Versions of the root-as-tree made by artist Johann Rohl when he worked in my studio for a month last summer.
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And in the background here, another by Johann with a horse by me hiding behind it, plus a couple of trees and a maquette that I made.
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In this detail of an endpaper for Hansel & Gretel, a leafy version appears bottom left.
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Festooned with icicles in my study for the print Christmas at Camelot.
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Yesterday my friend Philippa spent a day with me in the studio, and she produced this delicately beautiful version of the root, made in coloured pencils and sgrafitto.
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Johann made the three images on the left, and I made the tree.
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Four artists all working from one, small, dried root.
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
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The world is so full of strange things–love this transformation.
Really lovely to see so much beautiful stuff arising from humble origins! xx
A wonderful story, Clive, and a fascinating series of images inspired by that simple root. I now feel that my collection of ‘interesting sticks’ is fully justified!
Wonderful post Clive. the images that little root has conjured out of our minds are so curious and so varied, I particularly love the tree clad in icicles you painted – and I’m sure it hasn’t finished sparking our imaginations yet 😊
So much inspiration from such a tiny found object
It’s a lesson in learning to look carefully at everything we pass by. You never know where inspiration may hail from. Couldn’t have made up the Hansel & Gretel trees. The reality and strangeness of the found object is so much better than anything I might have invented.
You’re so right. People miss so much by not looking.