grouper52
Masterpiece
This beauty is a Blue Bell windswept I got semi-finished from a fellow in the lowlands. It should grow well up here in the mountains, I am told. It's a popular tree here, and a pleasure to work with. The pot is 16" long and 4 1/2" high; The tree's top is 16" above the pot; the tree's overall length is 40", and the width 21".
This beauty came to me with the standard Filipino-style styling, which, although very nicely done by the award-winning collector/artist from whom I got it, puts strong emphasis on overly-stylized, wavy wrapped-wire foliage pads that look like "flattened-green-helmets," and which, unfortunately, dominate the aesthetic here. Over the past two weeks, I sought to bring out the tree's natural beauty in a more authentic way, as judged by my "naturalistic" standards, which go back to John Naka's original advice/admonition: "Don't make your tree look like a bonsai, make your bonsai look like a tree."
The foliage pads were so dense that they were also completely shading a very nice area of branching tucked away in the lower interior, where the lack of light and perhaps even adequate ventilation was resulting in distinctly pale foliage that looked like it was on its way to deadwood. I like deadwood, but not there, and my changes have brought that area back to robust health.
Trees very seldom grow in stylized foliage pads all pointing uniformly in one direction, even in windswept locations. So, besides thinning out the foliage significantly, I sought to give each branch and sub-branches a more varied, and hence more natural and more interesting, configuration, one that has the often unexpected twists and turns of a tree in nature.
The tree came with a modest amount of wrapped wiring. On some occasions this was useful, and I left it on, and in places even added my own. But I rely on wrapped wire mostly for "baby bending"(see my tutorial on this in the Resources area here at BNut), and greatly prefer using guy wires for actual branch placement whenever possible and practical. You can see quite a few of the many guy wires I placed here (many more hidden in these views), and they will stay on until their work is done in a few more weeks.
I offer two views that show the preliminary work/progress. The first view shows it directly from the side as it came to me. The second view, rotated about 30-45 degrees, and with not only offers a more pleasing view of the foliage and branch structure, but also honors the tree's deadwood with increased exposure. My upgrades and re-acquaintance with my photographic equipment and software proceeds apace, but is still in a less-than-ideal state at this stage. Even so, I think the photos turned out well enough: Enjoy!
This beauty came to me with the standard Filipino-style styling, which, although very nicely done by the award-winning collector/artist from whom I got it, puts strong emphasis on overly-stylized, wavy wrapped-wire foliage pads that look like "flattened-green-helmets," and which, unfortunately, dominate the aesthetic here. Over the past two weeks, I sought to bring out the tree's natural beauty in a more authentic way, as judged by my "naturalistic" standards, which go back to John Naka's original advice/admonition: "Don't make your tree look like a bonsai, make your bonsai look like a tree."
The foliage pads were so dense that they were also completely shading a very nice area of branching tucked away in the lower interior, where the lack of light and perhaps even adequate ventilation was resulting in distinctly pale foliage that looked like it was on its way to deadwood. I like deadwood, but not there, and my changes have brought that area back to robust health.
Trees very seldom grow in stylized foliage pads all pointing uniformly in one direction, even in windswept locations. So, besides thinning out the foliage significantly, I sought to give each branch and sub-branches a more varied, and hence more natural and more interesting, configuration, one that has the often unexpected twists and turns of a tree in nature.
The tree came with a modest amount of wrapped wiring. On some occasions this was useful, and I left it on, and in places even added my own. But I rely on wrapped wire mostly for "baby bending"(see my tutorial on this in the Resources area here at BNut), and greatly prefer using guy wires for actual branch placement whenever possible and practical. You can see quite a few of the many guy wires I placed here (many more hidden in these views), and they will stay on until their work is done in a few more weeks.
I offer two views that show the preliminary work/progress. The first view shows it directly from the side as it came to me. The second view, rotated about 30-45 degrees, and with not only offers a more pleasing view of the foliage and branch structure, but also honors the tree's deadwood with increased exposure. My upgrades and re-acquaintance with my photographic equipment and software proceeds apace, but is still in a less-than-ideal state at this stage. Even so, I think the photos turned out well enough: Enjoy!