A Deft Touch: Another Excellent Critique by Robert Steven

wayne | 05/02/2012

After. Robert Steven’s simulation of a tree that was submitted by Sumardi. The before photo is below.

Robert’s deft touch
If you look at the before and after shots, it’s easy to see that it’s the same tree. The trunk has been leaned slightly to the left, some branches have been lengthened and some shortened, it has a different pot and the placement in the pot has been moved. Nothing very radical, yet the effect is striking; the tree has transformed from simple potential to realization of that potential.

Before. The image that Sumardi submitted to Robert.

Robert’s comments

The focal point
The focal point of this tree is the curve of the trunk. This focal point has good value of interest, but is not well enough explored to create an outstanding bonsai. To the contrary, it imparts a negative effect on the upper part of the trunk, which becomes too vertical and straight. As a consequence the tree has less visual balance, less beauty and less evocation than it could have.

The pot
Judging by the character of the line and the shape of the crown, this tree looks rather feminine, soft and casual, but the shape of the pot with the strong sharp corners is too strong, too masculine for the tree. Consequently, the overall image is less charming than it could be.

Solutions
My solution is to correct the straight vertical line of the trunk by leaning the tree slightly to the left. This creates a nice continuous flow with clear direction. In order to emphasize movement, the right branches are shortened and the left branches are lengthened.

The size of the crown is slightly reduced and opened up, creating more space and reducing the heavy feeling.

Finally, a new pot with rounded corners is used to fit the soft character of the tree. Now, with this new design, I believe that the overall effect is more charming and that a more cheerful mood is the result.

General comments
There is more than one way to design any bonsai and my critiques and recommended solutions might not always fit your taste and personal preferences, but I always try to give my opinion based on artistic and horticultural principles.

To understand my concepts better, please read my books Vision of My Soul and Mission of Transformation which are available at Stone Lantern.

My bonsai blog address : http://robert-steven.ofbonsai.org

Robert’s books

 

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Bonsai Rafting One Year Later

wayne | 04/29/2012

Though a purist might find fault, I love everything about this wonderful raft-style planting: the way the trunks are joined together by the snakelike surface root; the way whole thing undulates across the pot; the aged bark; the lush foliage that imparts a feeling of robust health; its overall shape and the shapes of the individual pieces; and of course the wonderful pot and the unity of the pot and the planting (if you bothered to read this far, you win a prize – see *** below).

Begging the question
I found the photo above (and the one below) at Tae Kukiwon Bonsai on facebook. The caption says John Pitt Bonsai Ceramics – Hawthorn at its best, so I visited John Pitt’s website to see if I could find it there, which I couldn’t. Then suddenly, a very faint flicker occurred, somewhere in the dark recesses of my aging memory, and I thought to search Bonsai Bark for John Pitt. Sure enough, there it was, almost exactly a year ago to the day, and almost foliage free.

This sweet looking peach bonsai is also from Tae Kukiwon Bonsai. It belong to Ivson R. Filipak, at least that’s what the caption says: “Prunus persica – Proprietário Senhor Ivson R. Filipak. Prunus persica var. nucipersica (nectarina anã) que foi adquirida como pré-bonsai no Bonsai do Campo em Porto Amazonas (PR) de propriedade do amigo Carlos Tramujas. Trabalhei nela 4 ano”

*** for those of you who bothered to read this far, you’ll receive a free Bonsai Aesthetics scissors with your next Stone Lantern order (provided you order by May 31st, 2012). All you have to do is put the following in the comments box with your order “free scissors from Bonsai Bark” and we’ll take care of the rest.

 

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A Magnificent Bonsai with a Strange & Wonderful Shari

wayne | 04/27/2012

Hanging out. Or just hanging in? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a shari quite like this one; it seems to be floating in the opening of the sabamiki (trunk’s hollow). Still, I think this would be a wonderful tree even without the shari; the sabamiki, the nebari and the superbly textured bark all create a powerful sense of age and character. I found both photos shown here at Michael Bonsai. They are originally from Bonsai Tonight.

Does the shari draw your attention to, or distract from, an otherwise magnificent trunk?
What would happen if you removed the shari on this ancient looking Ezo spruce? I’d guess that you’d be left with one of best sabamiki anywhere (if look at the photo below you’ll see how it stretches all the way from the ground to where the trunk disappears behind the foliage).

Still, I wouldn’t do it. The shari is just so damn unique, the way it demands your attention. Too bad we can’t have two trees like this; one with the shari and one without it. Then we could put them side by side and see what’s gained and what’s lost. Or maybe some photoshop maven can do it for us.

 

Can you imagine the tree without the shari? Photos by Jonus Dupuich,  Bonsai Tonight.

 

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Cut Paste Versus Natural Healing

wayne | 04/25/2012

One of Peter Tea’s freshly worked-on Trident maples. You’ll have to use your imagination to get a feel for what this tree will look like when it fills out. But if your imagination fails you, it still looks pretty good, just as it is.

Borrowing from Peter…
Once again, we are borrowing from Peter Tea’s excellent bonsai blog. This time it’s a story of two Trident maples. We’ll just whet your appetite here; for a whole series of instructive photos and insightful text, you can visit Peter’s blog.

Cut paste versus the natural way
Here is the West some people are eschewing the use of cut paste on tree wounds. The theory is that fresh air and sunlight are the best healers. It’s a pretty good theory if you don’t care about scarring. However, if you want to control how scar tissue forms and how scars look after healing, then the use of cut paste is important. The same can be said for cutting and carving techniques. We won’t go into all the details here, but we will offer a glimpse (from Peter’s blog) into the use of carving and cut paste to heal wounds.

 

The other Trident maple after Peter applied his deft touches. You can see the before shots for this one and the one above on Peter’s blog.

 

Removing old scars. I particularly like what Peter is doing here. In his own words… “As I cleaned the bark, I noticed some old small scars.  I’m not a big fan of scars on Trident Maples so I’m going to get these scars to heal up. Some Bonsai enthusiast out there likes to show off scars and dead wood on Tridents but I think these small scars are more distracting then interesting. What I did was taking a small carving too and re open the scars.  By doing this, the tree will sense the open wound and want to heal itself.  I did this to all the small scars I could find on the trunk… (continued below next photo).

 

“Next thing I did was cover the fresh wounds with cut paste. This step is important because the tree will heal much faster this way. Just think of a cut on your finger and using a band aid. Using a band aid always makes a cut heal faster. If I don’t use cut past, the wound will start to heal but may not close completely leaving me with what I had before. I expect these scars to heal by Summer.”

You can visit Peter Tea’s blog for the rest of the story.

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Medi, but Most Def Not Mediocre

wayne | 04/22/2012

Five or six brilliant bonsai
The first five trees in this post are from MediBonsai’s web gallery. The last one is from Germán Gómez’ facebook photos. MediBonsai belongs to Germán. Rather than bore you with my comments this time, we’ll just show you six brilliant bonsai (well, maybe just five are brilliant) and leave the comments to you.

 

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The Twist & Other Bonsai Eccentricities

wayne | 04/18/2012

Doing the twist. We’ve featured a few of these corkscrew types lately (all Shimpaku junipers), but this one takes the cake. Even though there’s something unnatural about many of these twisted bonsai, some work better than others and I’d put this one in that category. BTW: nature sometimes does twist trees in this manner, but I’m not so sure you’d find ones with this many twists growing naturally. Photo by Jonas Dupuich of Bonsai Tonight.

Pines and junipers at Meifu-ten
All of the photos in this post have been lifted from a post on Bonsai Tonight titled Pines and junipers at Meifu-ten. I picked out four of the most unusual trees because bonsai that are both high quality and unusual seem to exist at the cutting edge of the art (I’m not sure if this statement is really true, it just stuck me at this moment; you can be the judge).

 

A question mark. There area couple things that mark this striking Shimpaku as unusual, even eccentric. The most notable of these is the trunk’s question mark shape; a shape that is sometimes criticized in Japanese bonsai. Then there’s the way the deadwood forms an almost closed semi-circular hole (an abundance of strangely shaped deadwood is very common these days, especially in Japanese bonsai, so perhaps this isn’t really worth mentioning).


Time for a pine. This one’s eccentricity speaks for itself (hint: it’s not the powerful base with its excellent sabamiki or the aged bark).

 

Another Shimpaku. It’s easy to picture this strangely swooping tree growing down a cliff somewhere in the mountains of Japan. I wonder if the busyness of the base distracts from the tree.

While we’re on the topic of Pines and Junipers: these Stone Lantern Masters’ Series books can be purchased individually (both are discounted) or as set (for a larger discount).

 

 

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Weeky Wire: Dynamic Movement, Great Bonsai Events, Depth of Field

wayne | 04/16/2012

Dynamic movement. There’s something compelling about the shape and sense of movement expressed by this Carlos van der Vaart tree, even though the trunk’s somewhat uniform corkscrew effect gives me pause. I originally found this image on facebook, where the caption reads Carlos van der Vaart with Van Tuan Nguyen. It also appears in the gallery on Carlos’ website.

Our Stone Lantern warehouse is closed this week. Orders received this week will be shipped next week (the week of the 23rd) on a first-come, first-serve basis. Speaking of orders; don’t forget to fertilize your bonsai! Under-feeding leads to weak trees.

 

The Roots of Bonsai. The Bonsai Society of Dallas presents the LSBF 2012 Convention: The Roots of Bonsai, featuring Kathy Shaner, Michael Hagedorn and Ryan Neil (April 27-29). All three of these highly skilled bonsai artists studied in Japan and have a wealth of knowledge to share. As of yesterday, I’m told that some workshops are still open.

 

We’re saving this space. Send us information on your upcoming bonsai event <wayne@stonelantern.com>. If we like it (we like most of them) and especially if you provide a link or two, we’ll feature it here on Bonsai Bark.

 

See you there. This promises to be one of the greatest bonsai events ever in the U.S. Maybe the greatest. June 9-10. The Fair Expo Center, Rochester, New York. Details here.

 

 

Photographing bonsai. Morten Albek, photographer, author and bonsai artist, has an enlightening article on photographing bonsai on Bonsai Empire’s website. Morten is one of the few photographers who seems to be able to effectively photograph bonsai in natural settings (without studio backdrops). This tree is a good example; there’s plenty of potential background noise, but the way the lighting and depth of field are used minimizes distraction. In addition to visiting Morten online, you can also enjoy his high quality bonsai photos in his excellent book, Majesty in Miniature: Shohin Bonsai.

 

Japanese Bonsai Pots. The cherry blossoms above and the pot below are from a blog titled Japanese Bonsai Pots. If you like beautiful (perhaps even museum quality) bonsai pots, you’ll like this blog.

 

 

 

BSF 39th Annual Convention. Featuring Ryan Neil, Peter Warren and Kora Dalager. May 25-28.

 

 

Whoops. Somehow I lost the source for this photo. Apologies to the owner, photographer and everyone else. However, lost or found, this is a wonderful twin trunk pine. Zigs, zags and all.

 

 

Bonsai at the University of Michigan. Matthaei Botanical Gardans Bonsai & Penjing Collection. (the two bonsai photos above are by Carlos Diaz). Jerry Meislik (author of Ficus Bonsai) is the chairperson of the collection. You can visit Jerry’s site in addition to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens site, for information on the collection.

 

 

This monster is from the 2011 ASPAC. The photo is by Marcel Bebot Calungsud. It would be great to see a photo of the full tree, sans scaffolding.

 

 

Marc Noelanders is coming to Sydney. Tony Bebb too. The Tops-Weekend Workshops, August 24-26. Sponsored by the Illawarra Bonsai Society.

 

 

Mark your calendar for a world-class bonsai weekend. June 9th and 10th. Details here.

 

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Tiny Bonsai

wayne | 04/13/2012

I won’t guess the species this time (crabapple?), I’m that not good at it anyway (if you don’t believe me, check out the last post). What I will guess is that these are fairly normal human fingers, which means this is a very small bonsai. This and the other two photos in this post are from Eric Sin’s facebook page.

The biggest challenge with the smallest trees
Mini bonsai provide challenges that you don’t find with larger trees. Basically, it’s about showing something that’s compelling with a very limited number of branches to work with (you can almost always forget secondary, let alone tertiary branches). There are other challenges too, such as working in such a small format, and keeping something alive in such a small pot, but I think that such severely limited branching is the biggest challenge.

Warehouse closed for one week
Our warehouse will be closed for vacation starting today (Friday, April 13th) at 12:00 noon U.S. Eastern Daylight Time. All orders received after 12:00 noon today will be shipped the week of April 23rd on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Our free Green Dream giveaway is over today (Friday, April 13th) at 12:00 noon U.S. Eastern Daylight Time. Orders received after that time will not include free Green Dream. If you place your order later, PLEASE DO NOT ASK us to make an exception. Don’t worry, our prices are so good, that you’ll still be getting a great deal.

Almost grotesque, but pretty cool too. I don’t dare guess, but if I did, I’d say it’s a Winterberry (aka Japanese holly).

That’s a pretty compelling trunk, taper and all. And talk about limited branching… Again, I won’t guess that it’s a crabapple.

For an in-depth study of the small bonsai, you might want to take a look here.

 

Posted in Bark, Cuttings, Styling | Tagged | 10 Comments

Growing Better Roots & Trunks

wayne | 04/11/2012

In addition a one of the most perfectly developed crowns you’ll ever see, with its amazing profusion of tiny leaves; this Trident maple (I must’ve been drunk, any fool can see that this is a Zelkova) provides one of the best examples of trunk and surface root (nebari) development you’ll see anywhere. Neither are overstated; providing a welcome relief from overdeveloped trunk taper and nebari that you sometimes see in Trident maples. But then, you might expect perfection from this tree, it’s from the Grand Master Saburo Kato’s collection (Kato-sama’s most excellent book, Forest, Rock Plantings and Ezo Spruce Bonsai is offered by Stone Lantern).

The photo is from a series of photos on Morten Albek’s Shohin-Europe website, titled Mansei-en 2011. Mansei-en is the name of Saburo Kato’s bonsai garden and Morten Albek is the author of Majesty in Miniature, Shohin Bonsai (Stone Lantern Publishing). Mr. Kato died in 2008 (Phoenix Bonsai has an excellent biography). Morten is, as far as I know, alive and well in Denmark .

Growing better shohin roots and trunk
Morten Albek has just posted a practical guide to growing better roots and trunks. It’s for Shohin bonsai, but you can apply the techniques to larger bonsai as well.

One of a series of photos by Morten Albek on growing better shohin roots and trunk.

 

Posted in Bark, Cuttings, Growing Season, Styling | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Weekly Wire: Bonsai Surperstar, FREE Fertilizer, Making Uro, Spring!

wayne | 04/08/2012

Goyo-matsu (Japanese white pine) from the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum.

 

FREE FERTILIZER! We are giving away our favorite fertilizer over on Stone Lantern.
Just for the fun of it (and to encourage you to place an order and to  feed your bonsai!)

 

Happy white Easter from Walter Pall. This morning Walter posted a whole bunch of photos a lot like this. There’s even some scary photos that shows fully and partially leafed out maples covered with snow. Here’s the good news from Walter: “While I am posting these photographs it has stopped snowing and even the sun is coming out. It seems that this nightmare is over and has caused no harm.”

 

Marco is coming to Montreal. Marco Invernizzi, Italian bonsai superstar, will be at the Vendredi le 4 mai, à l’auditorium du jardin botanique à 19 h 30 (that’s the Botanical Garden auditorium, May 4th at 7:30pm, for us linguistically challenged folks).

 


Delicious! I think we posted something about this a while back, but now I can’t find it. Anyway, as you can see, it’s a mame bonsai pot. The artist is Horie Bikoh. The photo is from Albek Bonsai Studio, which is Morten Albek’s blog. Morten is, among other things, the author of our Majesty in Miniature, Shohin Bonsai.

 

 

Restarting a Trident maple by Peter Tea. From bonsai pot, back to training pot.

 

What’s a uro (besides an overpriced currency)? If you like to find out what a uro is and how to create uro on your deciduous bonsai, bonsai4me has an excellent post on the subject.

 

Celebrating Spring (snow, rain or sun). New England Bonsai Gardens 25th annual Spring Members Day Celebration is coming very soon. And you don’t have to be a member to go.

 

Bonsai Hungary blog

 

 

In our last Weekly Wire I originally posted the wrong dates on this one. I corrected it soon after it was posted, but just in case: the dates are June 21-24.

 

Much more than just corn, soy and pigs. The Iowa State Fair Bonsai Show will be held July 1 in Des Moines.

 

Speaking of eccentric bonsai. From Cliff Chong’s photo album.

 

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