I've finally made a choice on one of the flat cut trunks on this bad boy.
I cut the big flat cut trunk out of the centre of the tree. While it was live, it just made the trunk look like a barrel. Originally i was retaining it for carving, but the more i looked at the less i could find a height or size at which i thought a carved deadwood section would make sense or even look any good.
Given Ginkgo don't grow in the bonsai flame shape in nature, it only makes sense to my mind if it were an old tree that sustained massive damage to the trunk and re-shot from low down, leaving a hollow where the main single *imaginary in this case* straight single trunk originally was that subsequently rotted away, and a new primary trunk line was beginning to take over at last.
So i've removed the central flat cut trunk as i say and put putty over the wound for now. There is a bud on the rear that when it grows will provide some branching back behind the hollow so it won't draw the eye as dramatically then.
When that bud grows i'll make a decision about the flat cut trunk at the rear, if i reduce that down to that bud, and that will inform the final flat cut behind the thick continuation of the primary trunk line.
I think it has helped the taper issue, or rather just removed some visual weight out of the tree that make it such a brick of a stump to look at. The secondary trunk on the right hand side in the photo is now fully visible, where it was almost entirely blocked from view when i got it. While it is dead straight i absolutely prefer to see it than have it obscured by that thick, central, flat cut trunk.
All in all i'm happy with the change. It's going to still take an exceptionally long time to stop looking like a stump, but one day it might get there.
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