Austaus

[danielbrando050492@gmail.com]

Hey does anyone have some advice on styling my pines





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[shibui]

The first photo is OK. We can see the trunk from approximate viewing angle.
Second photo looking down from above does not give a good look at either trunk or branching.
2D photos do not give enough info on where branches start and which direction they grow so it can be hard to decide which are important to fill spaces and which come from similar levels behind the trunk. Maybe post a couple from 3 or 4 directions around the trees.
Before making any final decisions I would also like to see the nebari on each tree. No point designing a great tree from trunk and branches then discover the nebari looks like crap from that side.

Not clear what species you have. I can't make out whether the first has 2 or 3 needles so could be black, red or radiata or something else.
The second looks like a white pine but, again, I cannot ID the species from so far away.

It is definitely time to prune the first pine hard sometime in the next 6 months. Those branches are getting quite long and will almost certainly drop many of the inner needles this coming summer which will leave you with long, bare branches and little hope for good ramification.

[danielbrando050492@gmail.com]

It’s a white pine been grafted


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[shibui]

I assume Japanese white pine? The bark looks a little more like Pinus strobus which is one of the American white pines and not particularly good for bonsai.
I can see a couple of issues that will probably impact on any design for your white pine.
1. Roots: currently circling, tangled and pushing up over others which rarely makes our bonsai look stable or old. Note that this is not unusual with commercially grown trees, especially from general nurseries where they are grown for landscape where nobody cares about nebari. I would repot and sort out the roots as good as possible at the first opportunity. That may mean cutting some off completely. You should be able to shorten others and untangle then pot up with the roots spread out to develop a surface layer of radial roots.
You may like the look of tangled roots and choose to work with what you have. That's your choice but you have asked for advice.

2. Long bare sections with no taper: Again, this is normal with fast grown commercial trees but makes it hard to develop bonsai with good ramification. With many deciduous trees we can prune and hope for new shoots on bare sections but with pines chances of new shoots is much less so we need to either design to accommodate the long, bare parts or chop it off and use a lower branch to regrow a better trunk.

3. Branch whorls: Natural pine growth habit with several branches growing at the same level on trunk and on branches. More than 1 branch means local thickening which develops bulges on trunk and branches. You can see it starting to develop at the 1st and 2nd group of branches. Not a great look in a bonsai where we value taper and smooth lines. Need to remove excess branches as soon as possible to stop these bulges developing and growing thicker. At this stage, remove branches with long, bare sections and retain those with shorter distance to a secondary branch because those will be easier to design with.

4. Tree is relatively young so not much to design around yet. Everyone has a different idea of what might be good. I would be spending 5-10 years growing and developing the trunk and branches to get an aged look before making final decisions on final style.

At this early stage your tree can quite easily become quite a number of different shapes and sizes.
You purchased this tree so must have seen something worthwhile in it. Do you have any preferences or thoughts on shaping or style for it?