PETER ADAMS TALK - Ideas Summit 2011

[MelaQuin]

NOTES from Peter Adams at the IDEAS SUMMIT JULY 2011 [Saturday]

TRIDENTS
Several exceeding impressive Trident Maples were presented for Peter Adams to work on.
Peter commented that the trees were underpriced for their worth and what an enthusiast is doing when purchasing an advanced tree is buying time.

The first subject had the original upper trunk removed leaving a large scar between the smaller right branch and the apical left branch.

If large wounds are left to dry and not treated rot will set in. There is a difference in the Japanese and European [Western] thinking on rotted trunks in maples and it is a regional difference due to climate. In Japan there are few rotted trunks and the Japanese have tended to prefer an immaculate trunk and therefore caution against cavities. In Europe and America there is more natural damage to these trees and the enthusiasts in these areas go for the hollow trunks and cavities. Westerners are far more likely to fly in the face of Japanese tradition and promote the look they are familiar with.

What you need to do with large scars is to score the flat surface making indentations that flow with the grain of the wood to imitate natural rotting. Don’t score across the wound but downwards. Use different tools, bit sizes, to make the ‘weathering’ look natural and not man made. This treatment can be the difference between ‘oh my god’ and something good.

When you are working on naturalizing stumps and stubs always go to the lowest point and ensure there is a path for water to drain off. Standing water will rot the timber and care needs to be taken to avoid hollows where water will pool. The centre of a tree is inert, merely ‘stuffing’ so you do no harm carving into the wood.

When you have finished your carving use lamp black to darken the deadwood. If you use lime sulphur as a preservative then colour the wood once the lime sulphur has dried. Make sure your colouration has different tones as no wood is one colour and a solid black is not the point. Use solid black in the cavities and troughs to create shadows and visually increase the depth of the carving an lighter shades of gray on the higher points.

Teak oil can also be used as it gives a flat dull brown colour. The white of lime sulphur is a look you should avoid. With deciduous trees use lamp black or teak oil to make the deadwood dark and recessive, not white and ‘in your face’.

Tridents have fleshy roots so the use of heavy soil in cold weather is creating a problem just waiting to explode. Seven parts grit to three parts light organic material will create a soil that will suit tridents as this mix will give aeration. If you squeeze a handful of soil and it falls apart when you release the pressure you have the right mix. If you fling it against a wall and it sticks you are in for trouble. That is ‘death soil’.

When you are styling a trident you want the lines partially descending and then coming up. That is the way tridents grow – they do not grow with a strong downward slant as in an exaggerated “Japanese styling’. Groups of branches are used together to thicken the foliage. As the tree matures and ramification increases branching is simplified every couple of years.

Tridents are very forgiving and you can do a lot with them that would cause a Japanese maple to die. With Japanese maples you can make big cuts in the autumn after the main growth has slowed and before the tree goes dormant. The Japanese maple can handle major work easier and working at this time does not weaken the tree.

Don’t fall in love with what you are doing. It should be part of the piece. If your eye is attracted to a detail you have missed the point. You should see the tree in total and then note how well a styling feature suits but the styling feature should not hit you in the face.

Let the tree do the talking. Don’t stick a recipe you saw somewhere else on the tree. Let the tree guide your styling and if you do this you won’t have a carbon copy tree.

When loosening soil around the roots use your hands, not a chopstick. Fingers can feel and there is less chance of damage. You can also effectively use the handle ends of bonsai tools as they are strong enough to work with the soil but too thick to penetrate roots. Use your nose as a bonsai tool. Healthy trident roots smell a lot like bean sprouts. If this scent is ‘off’ there is too much moisture in the soil and that’s trouble.

Cut small roots off the top of major roots. You want roots coming out the sides.

When you start to work on the tree’s style be careful with your branch removal. When you remove superfluous branches you can start to see the structure of the tree and styling options become clearer. If you are unsure of where you are going leave the branch until the direction is more certain. Try not to prejudice styling by removing branches you might need. Overall you are striving for a 5-6 cm increase in branch length per year.

Stumps and stubs should be cleaned up and made to look natural so they don’t distract from the tree and their removal will clarify your styling. With scars from branch removals, if you chamfer them, making them a bit concave, the bark will roll in and grow over the wound. Long term character can be added with hollows created out of stubs and suitably blackened to look recessive. It depends on the look you want and what the tree is telling you.

Whatever you do make the branch structure and shaping sympathetic to the trunk style and you will get something fresh every time. Keep your styling appropriate to the species. If you respond to what the tree is offering and style branches accordingly you are on to a winner.

You can do all sorts of things to accelerate growth but you can’t accelerate bark development.

JUNIPERS and other topics
Make sure each branch has its own sun and is not shaded by other branches. Junipers need full sun all day and semi sun in the hottest of the summer period. Branches that don’t get enough sun due to their location on the tree will be weak and you might as well remove them straightaway because they will not grow properly.

Dry Pine roots – when pine roots dry out the tree encapsulates the roots in resin and that means they can’t access water = dead tree =don’t let your pines dry out.

Literati requires ‘magnificent neglect’. Let the tree find itself. It should have an almost accidental, almost incidental appeal and the more you try the less chance you will achieve what you want.

FOLIAR FEEDING Spraying full strength fertilizer on the leaves of bonsai gets the food to the leaves and right where the tree needs it. If you have a tree with some weak branches you can help strengthen them specifically without over feeding the entire tree. This can bring good results to weak areas. Use full strength Miracle Grow. It is very effective as it is high in nitrogen and pushes the tree.

Feed the tree and let it grow. In reasonable temperatures you can spray and leave the tree in the sun but on really hot days the tree should be given shade if you foliar feed.

[Ellen]

Great, thanks. Did he talk about choosing a black for hollows etc? I'm surprised he recommended Lamp Black as it's a very cold unnatural colour. Artists usually try to mix their own darks from other colours then add a touch of black only if they have to. Likewise greys mixed from black and white are pretty dead looking.

[Watto]

Ellen - I think he was making it look like dead wood?

[mudlarkpottery]

Peter mixed the lamp black with coffee that he poured from his cup into a saucer.
Penny.

[Bretts]

Your a godsend with your transcrips Mela, I missed them, thanks

[GavinG]

Many thanks. Your notes are clear and evocative.

Gavin

[Roger]

Mela
Many thanks indeed for your notes. Wonderfully detailed and useful for understanding what Peter presented.

Ellen
A good point about colour and how artists achieve it. I certainly felt in reading what Peter was doing that it wasn't quite right. He did talk of striving for variation in the intensity of shadow, but that would only be necessary if the carved surface did not have ridges and grooves that cast their own shadows and you wanted to suggest hollows that weren't there, which is perfectly fine - art is illusion.

It was perhaps a couple hundred years ago that European artists discovered that shadow aren't 'black'. They are darker than their surrounds, but they could be in tones of blue, green red, brown....

Roger