AusBonsai

Maybe something like this

Some cool trees in that post Dangerous Dave. Some of my projects might not be as abstract as I thought they were

DangerousDave wrote: ↑January 19th, 2023, 9:32 pm Here are a few to think about..

Haha Mike. I do love your bluntness.

Time will tell and I guess I’ll have to wait a while before I can show you my results of ignoring your rules.

Perhaps in about 10 years I’ll have material that may be worthy of some strong critique from you. Until then, I will happily continue to annoy you

Thanks for all the replies, really enjoying the pics and conversation.

DaveZ - Yep, it was Sam the bonsai bloke. I get what you mean and it’s a good idea to attach a name when communicating style. I just got a little confused and thought perhaps there was this whole vocabulary I had no idea about concerning styles in Australia

Thanks for the unique pics DangerousDave. That 3rd tree I thought had a snake chilling next to it really cool pictures mate.

Keep the styles coming everyone. They’re all so awesome

Great photos DD, thanks for posting. They show very exactly my feelings for "natural" - the trunks are extraordinary, but the foliage looks totally unrelated to the trunks. I will take what I can from the contours of the trunk, and try to develop foliage that looks as if it "belongs" to the trunk, or "evolves naturally" from its lines. Note the irony.

What Treeman refers to as "guidelines" are deep design principles - how your eye moves when it experiences the tree. Thank heavens we are beyond the stage in Australia where every "style" had to have a specific recipe of branches in specific positions, ratios of trunk height to thickness and all kinds of formulas designed to make it unnecessary to think or feel or look. Such that a tree that did not conform to the rules was "bad bonsai".

It's much harder to evolve a design in a tree that you've never seen before, than just to apply a recipe mindlessly. It's much harder to define why a design "works" than just to tick boxes in a formula. Use guidelines to train your eye, be critical of the details in trees that you see (in your own thoughts! Don't be offensive!) so when you make trees you have the tools you need.

And good luck. I'm seventy - in another fifty years or so, I think I might have this game worked out...

Gavin

Oh, and just another thought - a tree that is interesting in three dimensions will often not photograph well in two. And if you have the choice between safe and interesting, always go interesting. You may regret either choice in years to come - it doesn't matter, pushing your limits will stretch your mind more usefully. The worst result is when you don't care enough to get annoyed.

End of sermon.

Gavin