This is a tree that I created my first topic with on AB a year or two ago. I have started to realize where I was going wrong with design and thought I might post its progression for the purpose of some newbies to learn from. Please by all means learn at your own pace but take note of what I thought was good back then and what is good now and possibly what I see as good now may be rubbish in a few more years but its how we evolve (thats the fun part).
Anyway to begin.
Here is the tree around about 2010 when I had recovered it from mums house after a long stint of neglect and starvation. I purchased this tree way back in 1996 when I was a teeneager just starting out in bonsai with no real idea.I performed all sorts of torture back then including making it my first attempt at a root over rock with the guidence of a local bonsai group that I was a member of. I loved the tree back then and I loved it here as I was learning from it.
I entered it in an ausbonsai comp at this stage thinking it was the ducks nuts but it was very far from that. It came out of the shallow pot to sit and think about what it had done wrong. I think at this point I had experimented cutting halfway through the main trunkline and kinking it over to gets some movement which ended up a poor result so it sat and waited longer.
A few days ago I got it back out and thought what have I got to do to make this tree look right
so in my wisdom I began defoliating the tree to see what was in there and the result was as follows
So this is where it is as of now. A long way to go but it now has some sort of direction and balance. Th rock seems to work with it now growing over it and hanging out there.Cheers
Squizz
