After reading a lot of beginner threads on this site over the years, I am going to create a thread of advice about how to get the best start on your bonsai journey.
Simply put - take advantage of all of the people who have gone before you!
At some level there is a bit of skeptic in all of us, and we need to fight the urge to dive in and just start doing stuff because we are excited and we want to start growing trees NOW! And plus we are pretty smart, and self-confident and think "how hard can it be?" And so we fail. A lot. Meanwhile we are surrounded by people with a lot of experience who can look at what we just did and say "well I could have told you that wasn't going to work, because I made the same mistake 30 years ago!"
So focus on repeating other peoples' successes, instead of other peoples' failures.
Find someone with experience, and use their experience as your starting point. Try to learn everything they know - and master it, even if it takes you five or ten years. Don't be the person who spends 25 years learning what other people already know doesn't work - repeating all the mistakes they have already made. Once you become experienced, you can always try to improve upon processes, or techniques, or designs. But you are starting from a position of knowledge, instead of a position of ignorance.
This site can be an amazing resource. There are people here with decades of experience, including professionals who make a living in bonsai who come here to interact with people without asking for anything in return (except perhaps a little respect). Many members here have participated in national shows and won significant recognition for their work. Wouldn't it be better to start by trying to replicate their success, instead of striking out on your own?
Listen. Ask questions. Listen some more. And then try to do what they tell you... exactly. Only when you can replicate their success should you try to improve upon it. Don't try to run before you can walk. You waste years and years of time... and get frustrated along the way.
I've been living this advice for the last few weeks. Literally eat, sleep, repeat Bonsai.
Here's my advice from one newbie to another, what I've learned if you want to get into Bonsai and I mean really get into it.
1 Get to a club and if you're lucky like me (I have 3 clubs) join the best club. Get to know the 'big wigs' in the club. Be yourself while you're at the club. Talk to everyone. People will take you under their wing.
2 Don't buy trees yet. Sounds stupid, I know, but you'll end up buying a load of material that everyone in your club is going to tell you to plant in the garden. Instead of wasting money on a load of material that will teach you nothing keep the money. Sooner or later a piece of material will come along that you have to have. That's the piece of material to buy.
3 Get online and start watching stuff on YouTube. Learn the names. Work out who's work inspires you and what types of trees you actually like. Subscribe to someone and watch their beginner series.
Since I got into the hobby we've dealt with lock down. I spent a lot of time at garden centres buying material that would never make it to be decent bonsai in my lifetime. I also spent hours and hours watching certain people on YouTube wiring nursery material. At some point I realised that I wasn't actually seeing any real bonsai work. No real root work, no secondary or tertiary work. Or watching people grow a stump out and then prune it back to a stump.
Since lockdowns been over I got myself back to my club. The top 2 guys at my club have taken me under their wing and I have slowly started working with them over the last few weeks. I've been looking at the stuff I have and narrowed it down from 50-100 bits and pieces to about 17. A few have gone in the ground to thicken out. A lot I've simply given away. I've narrowed it down because there's only so much time I have to work my trees. There's a cost to fertiliser and seaweed and soils and wire and I'd like to focus the time and resources getting the first iteration of my collection to a good standard.
I've been taking in all this 'newbie advice' from the experienced guys and it works. A couple of months ago I was messing about with twigs in plant pots and a few days ago I was sat in someone's workshop watching trees being worked for exhibitions. Then walking out with a tree in my hands and one of the top artists in the UK saying "Get it in the sun, keep it watered and fertilised and we'll have a look at it soon."