Smoke and Mirrors - 003

[Smoke]

Cork Elm

I purchased this tree from a friend of mine that grows material in the ground. He grows everything from elms, quince, maples, pines and junipers. It is a great thing to have a person who is a personal friend that has the property to grow things and also be generous enough to share them with his friends. In this case I build stands for him and we trade that out in material. This tree was dug in 2013. I have alluded to the pitfalls of material grown out for bonsai and some of the things to watch out for. Most deciduous tree grown out for bonsai are not really great for bonsai if you are a purist and want a deciduous shaped tree. I mean that growers seem to spend all their time pruning and chopping for taper and forget that deciduous trees don't look like pine trees. They look like tree you might find in a meadow with a trunk forking gracefully many times as it reaches skyward. That would be the ultimate.

Trees grown in this shape tend to be confined to styling in only one way. Pine tree style. Sure a person can induce some forking on side branches, but the progressive look of the tree will continue to harbor that long tapering trunk line conducive to good pine trees. I wanted this tree anyway and was bound and determine to make something good from it no matter what. So in the winter of 2013 I dug it and started to work. I pruned off everything except that first branch that I though was going to be the focal point of the tree. "I'll work around that"



By summer of that year I had many small shoot to wire and I began picking out the keepers and rubbing off the losers.


At this point I had the tree in the nursery can from the dig and it was moving along very quick. It seemed to need almost weekly pruning.

In spring of the next year it was to go into a colander to compact the root ball during the summer. Elms grow so fast and roots get so big and thick that by fall they become unmanageable.








Considering this has only been one year, look at how large some of those branches are already. King Kongs Son.

 

[Smoke]

In 2015 the tree was tried in its first ceramic pot. The branches were coming along nice but the tree was so boring. There is nothing so boring as a pine tree styled deciduous tree. They all look alike and there is nothing dramatic or eye catching about the style. Sure the trunk is large but so is the height of the tree, which diminishes the feeling of the size of the trunk by removing its powerfullness with it's height. If the tree were only 12 inches tall with this trunk then it may feel more powerful but this feeling is rather wimpy.





Now its 2016 and It's time for a different idea. This tree is not carrying its weight on the bench and if something does not change then it will become raffle material. I have an idea. Just maybe this will work.

I prepare the tree for its radical change of clothes by removing almost all of the branches. I leave just the upper third of the tree with branches and decide to pull everything down hard.




I prepare a Japanese pot that I had bought many years ago. I finally had something to plant in this.



After the application of some guy wires I get the branches all pulled down and it looks pretty good. I am happy with the change and I can now put it back on the bench and feel good about it. This photo below is the photo I used here last year while talking about this tree as a bunjin in style. I don't think anyone really felt the way I did about it as most everyone told me this is not done in the Literati style.

 

[Smoke]

2018
Now I have really looked the tree over and decided that the tree still needs something. It still is top heavy and needs further reducing. So this is the tree now.

So I do a virtual of what I may look like with the pocket branch removed. A pocket branch is one that starts in the crotch of the trunk on the inside of a curve. Branches usually come from the apex of the outside of a curve.



So I remove the branch and shoot a picture.



So more contemplation and more study. I keep thinking it just needs one more tweak and I might be happy. I begin by looking at the bottom right branch and the heavy back branch. The back branch is so heavy that it lends weight in a photograph. It too makes the canopy seem top heavy.

I make the decision to remove them. Now it is Christmas 2018 and almost a new year. The tree is lighter and I feel it has enough elements to be called Literati. Many may still disapprove but it resides here on the bench, Son of Kong.

 

[Smoke]

I know... here is the one that wants to be seen. The top down!!!

 

[coh]

That's a really interesting tree and a creative use of the material. Who cares if some disapprove!

Some years ago when I was first getting into bonsai, Bill V had a bunch of taller cork elms on one of his sales tables. A number of them
had interesting/subtle trunk movements and could probably have been made into this type of style. Unfortunately at the time I didn't
have enough confidence in my abilities and I opted for a "safer" tree that could be made into a shorter more standard informal upright.
The tree is "OK" but I wish I'd gotten one of those taller ones instead, would have been much more interesting.

 

[Smoke]

That's a really interesting tree and a creative use of the material. Who cares if some disapprove!

Some years ago when I was first getting into bonsai, Bill V had a bunch of taller cork elms on one of his sales tables. A number of them
had interesting/subtle trunk movements and could probably have been made into this type of style. Unfortunately at the time I didn't
have enough confidence in my abilities and I opted for a "safer" tree that could be made into a shorter more standard informal upright.
The tree is "OK" but I wish I'd gotten one of those taller ones instead, would have been much more interesting.

Thank you

If I had a dollar for all the coulda, shoulda woulda's I passed on!!!

 

[Smoke]

For this year I will be concentrating on improving the right side of the canopy and shortening the left side for a counterbalance overall. The right slanting style with the abrupt direction change adds some dynamic movement in the trunk that needs weight on the right side of the canopy. I couldn't do that before with those larger branches balancing out the tree. To symmetrical then. Now I can build the asymmetry I need to make the tree interesting.

 

[jacob letoile]

I dont have anything to add All, but thank you for taking the time to type these up. Every time I see a progression thread I learn something. Thanks.

 

[MiguelMC]

I think this is a very ugly tree, and I love it for it. It's a tree that if I see it on a stand makes me look twice and come closer to see it.
Great job.

 

[bonhe]

Hi Smoke,
Very nice cork elm after 5 year training.
Its trunk is too big for literati. Can we consider it is hybrid literati ?
Thụ Thoại

 

[Gary McCarthy]

THANKS for doing one of these on a deciduous tree!

By summer of that year I had many small shoot to wire and I began picking out the keepers and rubbing off the losers.

I don't know if this is too involved to talk about here, but I'd be interested in your thought process when "picking out the keepers" for the initial branch structure. Are you looking for branches on the outside of curves and eliminating ones on the inside of curves, are you looking for alternating branches - right, left, back - are you eliminating bar branches, etc.

 

[Smoke]

Hi Smoke,
Very nice cork elm after 5 year training.
Its trunk is too big for literati. Can we consider it is hybrid literati ?
Thụ Thoại

Whats the difference?

 

[Arcto]

Dang! The tree looks more like a Larch than my larches do.

 

[pback]

WOW! What a fantastic progression and a very beautifully executed non-traditional styling. Being brand new to bonsai, this is the kind of tree, and the kind of progression, that I love to see.

 

[just.wing.it]

Great progression @Smoke, inspiring.
Keep showin' us how it's done!

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Before looking at the Christmas 2018 photo, the first right branch looked too heavy and the first left branch wasn’t pulled down enough. The new design has started to resolve these issues. Here are some other thoughts.

1. The trunk feels like it’s falling backwards. It may or may not lean away from the viewer, but that’s the impression it gives. Tilting it a bit forward may take care of #5 below.

2. The branches do not convey the same sense of age the trunk does. Positioning them pulled sharply down, then floating up; and not bowed down to the tips helps. This should be less exaggerated the higher the branch is in the tree.

3. The branch thickness on the left side is distracting, because they aren’t decreasing in thickness as they ascend the trunk, reflecting the nice taper of the trunk. Removing that lowest left branch could help resolve this. It seems to be awkward in emergence and movement anyway, only serving to fill in some of the negative space on the left. Since it’s an elm and in CA, that space could be filled in by April from a more appropriate branch.

4. The apex is nice, but even in literati, this elm can get away with a more rounded apex.

5. The pot isn’t a bad fit, it definitely conveys the look and it “works”, but it could be potted in something slightly larger and planted a touch deeper to increase the appearance of age at the base. The roots are exposed to the point where flaws are unnecessarily visible. It had a great base, which could be shown to a greater advantage if the dead part of the root facing forward was covered.

 

[bonhe]

Whats the difference?

Well, I did not see the tall, slender tree with trunk line moves gracefully here. I see the base and height ratio seems to be 1/5.
However, because all branches at upper third of the tree with scarce branchlets.
It is why I think it is a hybrid literati!
Thụ Thoại

 

[Joe Dupre']

It's definitely an eye-catcher. The original version was good, but didn't have a lot of "grab your attention" attitude. This version inspired me to experiment further with the literati style.

 

[DirkvanDreven]

I very much liked the tree as shown in post 2. I see here (again) that a good tree is not good enough. There''s always the urge to make good better and I admire the insight of how 'better' looks. With my teacher I had set goals for my big black pine, and even ways before thsee were achieved, my teacher pointed out other possibilities for improving my tree.
It proves also that there is no (never?) such a thing as a finished bonsai?

 

[Cable]

Arguing over it is better than nobody talking about it IMHO. I like the changes.