Designhelp with onesided Scots

jaarseth

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This was one of the pines I collected last year. It's in pretty good shape and has put up a lot of growth this year, but I'm struggeling on where to take it design wise. As you see on the pictues the front is very bare, and I feel it is very one sided, and i dont like the parallell branches coming out on each side of the trunk either.
As its still flexible I can pretty much bend it to any shape. Any design feedback is great as I feel pretty stuck (last picture is one of my opions).
 

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sorce

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From where are they collected?

Welcome to Crazy!

If you can grow and improve your hunting and collection experience in parallel with this tree's slow development, you will eventually find something you will have learned enough to make excellent.

In short....work on killing this one, with the objective being the education from that extreme.

Sorce
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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Go ahead and bend the living crap out of it this winter.
I'm not kidding.. Whenever I'm stuck on design, I just wire it. Then leave it for a year or two.. Then the new options present themselves.

Yes, I have cut back to the single lowest branch four times because nothing happened. But I also made some trees into true yamadori-lookalikes. Two more years of development and they'll start looking like real bonsai.

Here's an example

IMG_20210905_184518.jpg
I plan on a lot of shari and a lot of deadwood. Bunjin kind of outcome..

But all in all, I can recommend reducing points with 3 branches back to 2. Whether you cut the trunk or one of the two branches is your own choice to make.
 

Paradox

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I like the front you picture but I disagree with some of the branches you propose to eiliminate.

If you dont want to twist it all up, which is certainly an option, you can do something like this:

You could change the planting angle a bit (although not entirely necessary), wire the trunk and give it a bit more movement in the direction of the arrows Ive put on the picture below. The lower arrow is optional for a bend as there is already movement there but you might want to accentuate that.
I would definitely bend the top of the tree to the right as I pictured. You want to have branches on the outside of the curves.
Also there is a back branch in the vicinity of the first bend that I would leave.
 

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Shibui

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I think the reason you are struggling for design ideas is that it is still so young it has very little to work on as design. That is not a bad thing as it leaves almost anything open for the future and is the reason you'll get so many differing views on what can be done.
I've found 2 ways to tackle trees like this.
1. Put it away and virtually ignore it until it ages enough to have fewer options and more character to work on. Downside is that pines don't bud on bare wood so can quickly get past recovery leaving no options.
2. Make a decision on direction - any direction - and start working toward that from now. There is no wrong answer here, just lots of good possibilities.

It is a very young tree so you cannot expect to make a mature bonsai from with a single prune and wire session or even a few months. Try to look forward a few years or more with your development plan.
Young seedlings are easy to find and easy to collect but If you really want good bonsai quickly from collected material you really need to be very selective with what you collect and search for the very few more mature trees with real character already present due to age and conditions.
 

Potawatomi13

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"I think the reason you are struggling for design ideas is that it is still so young it has very little to work on as design."

The heart of matter😊
 
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Stella

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If you are struggling to see anything, you could cut it just above the 2nd branch and develop that branch at the leader and get some nice movement in there
 

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Potawatomi13

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This was one of the pines I collected last year. It's in pretty good shape and has put up a lot of growth this year, but I'm struggeling on where to take it design wise. As you see on the pictues the front is very bare, and I feel it is very one sided, and i dont like the parallell branches coming out on each side of the trunk either.
As its still flexible I can pretty much bend it to any shape. Any design feedback is great as I feel pretty stuck (last picture is one of my opions).
Trunk needs development. Plant in bigger but shallower growing container or ground until trunk is 3-4" then begin development. While growing keep low branches healthy/unshaded for development.
 
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