AusBonsai

GavinG wrote:I'm with Ken - it has to be believable. When a trunk is thick, smooth, dead straight, and heavily carved to disguise an obvious chop, it doesn't work for me. If the trunk is gnarly or twisted, it fits better. The same with dead wood on junipers - if the trunk is already thin, to take the bark off half of it, and bleach it just makes it look even thinner.

To agree with Gavin about the need for carving to be believable, when Mauro Stemberger was here, he stressed the importance of adding depth and texture to carved areas. To simply take off the bark, as many people do, does not give a believable picture. My pet peev is jins that have not been distressed to simulate a broken branch and the flat branch cut is visible at the end.

From my reading and one trip to Kokufu, (and I will happily be corrected) for exhibition quality bonsais, the Japanese prefer no carving on deciduous trees like maples. It is even preferred when uro heal over and disappear. On the other hand, I have a personal preference for 'spooky' highly carved trees and love hollows like uro and sabamiki.

Here's my opinion.

It all depends on the tree and the skill of the artist.

I would never in a million years consider interfering with a 200 year old juniper with loads of character...the hand of man can never duplicate years of abuse from mother nature, it just never happens - even Kevin Wilson couldn't disagree with that

However, If I've got an old Olive Stump with zero natural beauty or features, then hell yeah, the carving tools are coming out.

Carving just gives us another tool in creating beautiful and interesting bonsai, simply labeling it as "bad"or over used is a little short sighted. Let's face it, with tougher collection laws and Yamadori being pulled out quicker than you can blink, it will only be a matter of time before all we will have access to is field grown stock, then what are we going to do?

I think bad technique in the very most basic of skills, such as wiring and styling are just as responsible for creating substandard Bonsai as carving, maybe even more-so!


Here is an example of a field grown swampy I carved recently, as it had virtually no taper or movement. The end result may not be to everyone's liking but to me, it's much better than how it started. It just recently had a severe cut back to get some better taper in the branches...probably still 5 years to go before I'm happy with it.

Cheers,

Dave.

sorry, here's the current pic