Chinese elm Drunken Sailor

[Si Nguyen]

Hi Si,

That sketch is absolutely fabulous. Would you be able to send me a larger format of it?

Grant

Hi Grant. The original sketch is very small. Only about 2 inches tall. I do tiny quick sketches, then scan it into the computer, then enlarge it to show here. That's why the lines are fuzzy. You could click on the image attachment to open the full picture. If that's not big enough, I'd be happy to do a different larger drawing later when I have time.
Nice job trimming!

 

[Bonsai Nut]

I personally prefer the front rotated 20 degrees. Otherwise if I had to see that knot staring at me front and center I would name the tree "cyclops"

Here how I would trim the tree before I did anything. You can see how you have some bad branches, including some that are too thick, parallel, etc. You might want to leave the bottom right branch as a sacrifice to thicken the trunk and put a little taper and motion in it. Let it grow wild for 2-3 years and chop it.

Here's generally where I would take the tree from a design perspective. Back branches are really important in this design. Make sure you don't have any main branches directly over the daughter tree trunk - it will look unnatural. Right now in this design the apex of the primary trunk is still too heavy, but I got tired of working on the virtual In real life you would still want to lighten it and open it up more I think. Branches on the daughter trunk alternate - bottom projects forward, middle projects diagonally back, top is directly to side. The daughter trunk should not look like a stalagmite like in my virtual - you want it to have character including minor bumps and kinks - but the line should follow the line of the main trunk more or less.

 

[Grant Bowie]

Thanks everyone for the input. I will see how it comes out in the flesh.

Grant