a scots pine experiment
Posted: January 11th, 2018, 7:53 pm
It has been a long time for me between new material, I think perhaps 2 years since I had some raw stock
I finally got myself motivated and went and bought a tree I have ummed and ahhed over for a while now, a grafted scots pine.
Why did I um and ah?
well, it's nursery material, not grown for bonsai, which means it could well be rubbish, it's overgrown so the growth is a long way from the trunk and also very hard to see into, and its a graft, ahh no a graft
It's not a bad one though So why did I buy it?
I havent styled raw material in 2 years!
Also it's old, the graft is barely visible and it's a dwarf variety of scots pine, so good bonsai material with even smaller needles.
Now this is never going to be your traditional pine, but I have those, and this is actually quite fitting with the thread just started by squiz on pine styling.
I wanted this tree to be wild, I wanted it to be like the pines I admire when driving around the southern highlands of NSW, those big, old, beaten, messy, not at all bonsai like pines that look fantastic
I always asked myself (again much like what squizzy was asking) why I had never seen a pine growing in nature that looked anything like the pines I admired as bonsai, so with this tree I wanted as best as I could to try and bring some of that in, and I think the material was right for it.
Now as I said above, this tree is full of problems, and some haven't been addressed yet, some have kinda (i'll finish the jin) and some I don't care about whatsoever (yes, I know it has reverse taper, I DID happen to notice). I'm done with writing trees off because of a few issues, if you have a perfect tree awesome! but I havent seen one yet.
Anyway, here it is cleaned up and branches selected And here it is styled, I can't decide what I want to do apex wise (if you can call 3 branches an apex) but once it fills in I'm sure I'll work it out I hope you all enjoy it, I enjoyed styling it, I enjoyed the challenge, and most of all I think I enjoyed thinking about a tree where my first step wasn't to bring the branches down
It's a bit of a rant but so what, it got me thinking and hopefully it does the same for others
Cheers,
Kerrin
I finally got myself motivated and went and bought a tree I have ummed and ahhed over for a while now, a grafted scots pine.
Why did I um and ah?
well, it's nursery material, not grown for bonsai, which means it could well be rubbish, it's overgrown so the growth is a long way from the trunk and also very hard to see into, and its a graft, ahh no a graft
It's not a bad one though So why did I buy it?
I havent styled raw material in 2 years!
Also it's old, the graft is barely visible and it's a dwarf variety of scots pine, so good bonsai material with even smaller needles.
Now this is never going to be your traditional pine, but I have those, and this is actually quite fitting with the thread just started by squiz on pine styling.
I wanted this tree to be wild, I wanted it to be like the pines I admire when driving around the southern highlands of NSW, those big, old, beaten, messy, not at all bonsai like pines that look fantastic
I always asked myself (again much like what squizzy was asking) why I had never seen a pine growing in nature that looked anything like the pines I admired as bonsai, so with this tree I wanted as best as I could to try and bring some of that in, and I think the material was right for it.
Now as I said above, this tree is full of problems, and some haven't been addressed yet, some have kinda (i'll finish the jin) and some I don't care about whatsoever (yes, I know it has reverse taper, I DID happen to notice). I'm done with writing trees off because of a few issues, if you have a perfect tree awesome! but I havent seen one yet.
Anyway, here it is cleaned up and branches selected And here it is styled, I can't decide what I want to do apex wise (if you can call 3 branches an apex) but once it fills in I'm sure I'll work it out I hope you all enjoy it, I enjoyed styling it, I enjoyed the challenge, and most of all I think I enjoyed thinking about a tree where my first step wasn't to bring the branches down
It's a bit of a rant but so what, it got me thinking and hopefully it does the same for others
Cheers,
Kerrin
