Albury Wodonga workshop

[shibui]

Our club had Joe Morgan-Payler up for a couple of workshops last Saturday. Most of our members are relatively inexperienced. Only 2 have attended workshops before but we had some good trees brought in and Joe did a great job sharing his knowledge on the different species as well as styling some nice future bonsai.
Here are the ones I worked on.
This one is quite small. It will be trained as exposed root style and is currently in a 15 cm plastic pot.

AW workshop 2015 07.JPG

AW workshop 2015 11.JPG

I worked with another black pine in the afternoon session. I've developed this one as a root over rock for quite a few years. Its a bit bigger and is in a 30 cm pot.

AW workshop 2015 06.JPG

AW workshop 2015 17.JPG

[Scott Roxburgh]

Nicely done I really like the first one, I'm really liking the exposed root pine bonsai at the moment, not many around though?

[shibui]

Exposed roots adds another dimension to the bonsai but like an additional trunk it also adds further complexity and makes it more difficult to achieve a good bonsai. Every time you add another element it multiplies the problems - more to go wrong. This one is far from perfect but a nice start I think.

Now just need to keep it on track.

[Scott Roxburgh]

Agreed, any way you could get a bit more movement in the trunk?

[shibui]

I think the trunk is still flexible enough to make gentle bend. The real problem is that it is pretty short so less room to make a bend. Where does it look like it could benefit from a bend and which direction would you turn it?