This soulful tree is exceptionally clean, fluid and well balanced; especially considering how far to the right it is leaning. I lifted it from François’ website. It looks like a very small needled pine, maybe a dwarf Scot’s of some kind, though I can’t really tell. Dead-on deadwood artist François Jeker does some of the [...]
Carl Morrow sent us this digitalized revision (and two others, see below) of a juniper that was originally submitted to our ‘Fearless Bonsai Warrior‘ program, by John Romano. This is the second critique of John’s juniper that has been submitted to Bonsai Bark (here’s the other). Carl’s turn with John’s Juniper The photos and text [...]
Here’s a great example of an English hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) that started as large tree that was cut down and carved. The artist is Graham Potter of Kaizen Bonsai. Carving video by Graham Potter If you are interested in carving as well as reducing large field grown trees, check out the video below. It might [...]
In this series of photos (from our Juniper book), Hideki Nakayatsu turns a needle juniper on its side to work on the apical jin (jin can be either a dead branch or a dead top of the trunk). He is using is a draw knife to carve natural looking grooves in the wood. Though there [...]
These four stages of natural aging on deadwood are from an article by François Jeker that appeared in Bonsai Today 103 (out of print). Francois is a accomplished bonsai artist (and deadwood master), gardener, author (Bonsai Aesthetics) and more. Stage one A freshly peeled branch or trunk will have completely smooth wood. Stage two Over [...]
This classic Japanese white pine (Pinus parviflora) shows all three types of deadwood: sabamiki (hollow trunk), shari (deadwood on the trunk) and jin (dead branches or dead treetop; if you look closely you’ll see a few little dead branches sticking out). The tree is from our Pocket Bonsai Gallery (it originally appeared on the cover [...]
A detail of a Mugo pine (Pinus mugo, also called Swiss mountain pine) that was carved by François Jeker eight years before the photo was taken. François’ expert carving, and the sun, rain, wind and frost have combined to create a natural look and feel. The photo is from Bonsai Today issue 104 (out of [...]
