markyscott
Imperial Masterpiece
This is my Western juniper after some summer work in preparation for nationals
I have a thread detailing it’s development. In short, I purchased it as raw stock in 2013. It was likely collected in about 2009 or 2010. Here’s what it looked like at purchase.
Scott’s critique:
I have a thread detailing it’s development. In short, I purchased it as raw stock in 2013. It was likely collected in about 2009 or 2010. Here’s what it looked like at purchase.
Scott’s critique:
- This tree is still early in its bonsai journey. It’s come a long way, but its only 5 years in development and could use several more growing seasons under its belt to build more interesting and sophisticated branch development
- The interest here for me is the multitude of jin and large areas of shari. An overly refined canopy would compete with the story of struggle told by those jin and I’ll have to be careful to avoid an overly manicured look for the tree while at the same time improving its refinement.
- The main issue that I see is that the left side and the right side of the tree almost look like two different trees. Cover the right and the left side has the appearance of a conventionally styled tree. Cover the left and the right side is more sparse, wth branches interrupted by large jin features and lots of negative space. I think eventually I’ll have to make up my mind on this.
- The upper 1/2 of the trunk lacks taper. There’s very little that I can do about this without some major carving work. I don’t think I want to do this as it would destroy the natural deadwood on the tree. Best I can do is interrupt it with foliage. There’s a tuft in front, but I think that branch needs to develop further to provide a more solid visual break to that part of the trunk