Giga
Masterpiece
Yep that what I thought
Ancient Bonsai vs Todays Bonsai...
- Thread starter Bolero
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Yep that what I thought
Vance Wood
Lord Mugo
It is at this point we find the reason for the styling of bonsai in the first place. Though many fine trees have been a probably will be collected from the mountains beautiful trees like this one cannot. They can only exist if pieces of lesser material are worked and crafted to look like this tree.
Giga
Masterpiece
Yep ive seen a good few of trees like this in my Yamadori adventures
Vance Wood
Lord Mugo
As have I in my wife and I's journeys out West and up high.
Ry2Tree2
Yamadori
Calling foliage a helmet is an easy caricature to describe some trees, but not all domed foliage deserve to be referenced to as a helmet in a negative way. To me the important elements are ensuring the foliage is not excessive relative to the visual weight of the trunk, ensuring there are multiple pads with finer definition than a single overarching dome, and ability to see some branch structure. These elements like in your earlier photos make domes much more appealing to me.
Vance Wood
Lord Mugo
In todays world people are prone to make judgements with glaring generalities so we have the green helmet made by bonsai people that don't like a defined form in bonsai or one they think is so. We also have the don't pinch Junipers argument. It goes on and on it must be part of human nature.
I agree with all that except to say that even some trees with ''multiple pads'' can look extremely artificial. For example Suzuki's famous needle juniper. - and I generally love his work.
Check out the Ezo spruce in the second black and white. You can notice that beneath and above the foliage masses there are small twigs jutting out of the profile. It's little subtleties like this that can make a huge difference in the image that hit's your eye. Usually these kinds of things are clipped away and that is part of the human need to look for straight lines.(aside from the pressure felt to conform). I find myself doing it all the time and it's a real discipline to leave it be sometimes
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Ry2Tree2
Yamadori
Are you talking about the one that Hagedorn reworked here?
https://crataegus.com/2017/06/29/experiment-results-foemina-juniper-maintained-as-needle-juniper/
I can agree that having multiple pads does not singularly make it look natural and can sometimes offer their own way of looking artificial into the composition. I think the reworked product looks more natural, but still a little too perfect somehow. I'm not sure how to address that for this specimen though.
No not that one. I can't find it after a quick search but this one is similar...although even less manicured.
As for the Hagedorn tree, It's the obvious clipped poodle like forms that disagree with me. To clean, too neat and tidy, not wild looking. The neatness of the foliage does not agree with the battered trunk - to me. Perhaps if 30 or 40% of the twigs were removed and different heights given to them? More wayward lines? It's something that you (I) almost can't put into words. Below is a natural half dead upright juniper.
Really! Sure the top is triangular, but it a not nearly as rigid as your lines would suggest. There are little undulations in the Silohette.
Same is true for the bottom of the pads. Sure, there’s no hanging foliage, there’s not supposed to be any! But there is a softness to the shape of the bottom of the pads.
This tree has a “bumpy” yet triangular upper Silohette, the bottoms of the pads are generally flat, but not perfectly so. True, it’s a little more open than your picture, but it has much the same character.
Says who?
View attachment 163120
If you say so. It's a magnificent thing.
BTW I believe that's a procumbens without scale foliage.
But hang on a sec Adair, didn't you say once that naturalism was not your bag? You're not coming over to the dark side are you?
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Anthony
Imperial Masterpiece
When there is no Art training, all you get is folk copying each other
to death.
Ever notice the high resistance in Bonsai to Art Training.
Bonsai is Health and then Design. repeat, repeat..................
Mannerism rules, Naturalism enters, Idealism still waiting ..................................
to death.
Ever notice the high resistance in Bonsai to Art Training.
Bonsai is Health and then Design. repeat, repeat..................
Mannerism rules, Naturalism enters, Idealism still waiting ..................................
sorce
Nonsense Rascal
I really appreciate these comments.
That you can admit to wrong and understand the difficulty in self discipline.
Priceless. Absolutely priceless!
Sorce
Says who?
View attachment 163120
If you say so. It's a magnificent thing.
BTW I believe that's a procumbens without scale foliage.
But hang on a sec Adair, didn't you say once that naturalism was not your bag? You're not coming over to the dark side are you?
I don’t think that’s a Procumbens. The needles are too long. I think it’s a Tosho. “Needle Juniper”.
Look at my avatar. It’s a JBP, but the Silohette isn’t perfectly straight. The pads are clean on the bottom, but they have a soft feeling.
I agree I don’t care for the trees that are so over styled
they look artificial. I admire the skill it takes to do it, but they don’t appeal to me. I have spoken with Bjorn about it because I feel that his styling is too rigid. And he told me that he styled “a year in advance”, so that after the tree has grown out for a year, it will have softened up. But many people will take them to a show immediately after he’s worked them.
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Vance Wood
Lord Mugo
Images like this, as it occurs in nature, should be the subject of study in achieving the inspiration for your bonsai. Sometimes we look to other artist's work and try to emulate the person's work when we should be emulating natures work. We have the techniques to do everything you see here if you take the time to experiment and learn them. Notice the foliage pads,---they have a beautiful undulating quasi-lumpy and natural feature to them. Most of the collected Junipers I am seeing today do not have this feature at all, but the trees are capable of producing this and for some reason our artists make reasons as to why they don't do this. Once you come to grips as to believing you can do this then it's time that the art aspect of bonsai enters in to provide a degree of order to the image.
The art of bonsai and it's techniques are not an end in themselves they are a means to an end. This is too often forgotten. I have said it over and over for many years; you can break all of the rules of bonsai in any tree as long as the work in the end does not look like you went out of your way to break the rules, or your work is so messy and ugly that it calls into question the fact you have violate the rules. By giving your bonsai a PC name does not make it good. You can, if you wish, call a turd a coprolite but it is still a turd, but I have said this too: Successfully executed art establishes the rules. Rules of art/bonsai are really the examination of successfully executed art.
The art of bonsai and it's techniques are not an end in themselves they are a means to an end. This is too often forgotten. I have said it over and over for many years; you can break all of the rules of bonsai in any tree as long as the work in the end does not look like you went out of your way to break the rules, or your work is so messy and ugly that it calls into question the fact you have violate the rules. By giving your bonsai a PC name does not make it good. You can, if you wish, call a turd a coprolite but it is still a turd, but I have said this too: Successfully executed art establishes the rules. Rules of art/bonsai are really the examination of successfully executed art.
chicago1980
Omono
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Exactly.
No I mean the first one the one with the yellow triangle. (post 88) That's a procumbens.
Good point but it's not an over powering percentage of the tree. Not the first thing that hits you in the eye.
Possibly. The Procumbens I’ve seen with scale foliage uselessly have longer “leaves”. That looks more like shimpaku to me. Maybe even Kishu. He foliage is pretty tight.
By the way, you had been pretty adamant that Procumbens could only have juvi foliage. What made you change your mind?
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