So now your spending 300.00 a year for Ryan, how much you spending for material?

[amcoffeegirl]

Here is what I did. I started with very young trees to make sure I could keep the species alive. I realized that I could. Then I bought better trees. I will likely purchase better stock from now on when I can get it. Now that I know what I'm doing. Plus if it's healthy already an established tree is easier to keep alive than a stick in a pot- usually. If I want to try a new species I may still start with a young tree to make sure I can keep it alive first.
This may be backward thinking but I don't want to spend $400 on a tree that I may not be able to keep alive. That is the most I've spent on a tree. I have also purchased some quality tools this year and a tool roll. So I'm in it now.

 

[Tidal Bonsai]

Not to mention, is The US National Show, The Artesans Cup, The Noelanders Trophy, or the Kokufu Ten the goal of everyone in this hobby? The most amazing private collection I have ever seen, belongs to someone who has no interest at all in shows. Her personal
enjoyment is waking up everyday, watering and enjoying the trees in her yard. There are many ways to get joy in this hobby, including but not limited to:

-Making pottery
-Collecting pottery
-Making accents
-Collecting Yamadori
-Growing seedlings
-Ground growing trees
-Making tools
-Making scrolls
-Making stands
Etc...etc...etc...

 

[A. Gorilla]

A buck three eighty.

 

[MichaelS]

You gotta be buying material like this:

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Teachers can show you how to make good trees but that not mean you will be able to. It's not something you learn so much as something from inside. You need imagination and power of observation for a start. Some people don't have any - for whatever reason, and they will never make good trees regardless how much they want to or how much they listen to Ryan and others or how good the potential of the material is.
Teachers are way over-rated in my view. I can tell that by the blank expressions on the faces of those watching a demo or doing a workshop and by the fact that after a decade of that, no improvement or understanding in the trees or what they are doing. The best teacher is yourself plus enthusiasm, insight (if you have any) and trial and error over a long time frame. I think the biggest issue is not being able to visualize into the future. Teachers are very good for showing you how to wire not how to make a tree. That part is entirely up to you.

 

[Adair M]

Guys, Bananaman just likes to stir the kettle, get everyone all riled up. He doesn’t really care which side of the argument he’s on, he’s just trying to troll everyone. Everyone!

Read his original post. It’s all over the place! On the one hand, he’s saying that ya gotta have great starting material to make great bonsai. Then in the next paragraph he’s talking about a Master saying we ought to work on anything the client brings. Then he talks about another who can’t seem to advance a tree in 40 of working on it, and then he derides another for refusing to work on poor material!

He’s arguing in circles, sure to touch someone’s nerve, and cause a shitstorm! Don’t fall for it!

Work on the aspect of bonsai you like, spend what you can afford or what you choose to spend. Some like to propagate, some like to show. And there’s levels all in between.

Don’t let Bananaman troll you. He’s not interested in furthering your skills. He’s just trolling.

 

[coh]

Guys, Bananaman just likes to stir the kettle, get everyone all riled up. He doesn’t really care which side of the argument he’s on, he’s just trying to troll everyone. Everyone!

Read his original post. It’s all over the place! On the one hand, he’s suing that ya gotta have great starting material to make great bonsai. Then in the next paragraph he’s talking about a Master saying we ought to work on anything the client brings. Then he talks about another who can’t seem to advance a tree in 40 of working on it, and then he derides another for refusing to work on poor material!

He’s arguing in circles, sure to touch someone’s nerve, and cause a shitstorm! Don’t fall for it!

Work on the aspect of bonsai you like, spend what you can afford or what you choose to spend. Some like to propagate, some like to show. And there’s levels all in between.

Don’t let Bananaman troll you. He’s not interested in furthering your skills. He’s just trolling.

Yep, you nailed it. He's a TROLL (with a giant Ryan Neil-sized chip on his shoulder). And it's a shame, he has years of experience and could be a positive voice in the forum.

 

[Bananaman]

A couple of you have shared how you started or how you just try to keep things alive. I think that’s a smart way to go. It’s what I did, before the internet.

Read that part again, before the internet. You know where everyone on gods green earth asks how to keep it alive, what is it, and help me style it and make it as thick as my leg. Posting pictures of the stick from buying it at Walmart to looking at a larger stick two years later.

That’s the difference.

 

[TooCoys]

A couple of you have shared how you started or how you just try to keep things alive. I think that’s a smart way to go. It’s what I did, before the internet.

Read that part again, before the internet. You know where everyone on gods green earth asks how to keep it alive, what is it, and help me style it and make it as thick as my leg. Posting pictures of the stick from buying it at Walmart to looking at a larger stick two years later.

That’s the difference.

I'm not following you... what does the internet have to do with the price of trees? or tea in china?

 

[Adair M]

I'm not following you... what does the internet have to do with the price of trees? or tea in china?

I think the heat had gotten to him. He usually makes more sense. Maybe he’s channeling his inner Sorce!

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

You can buy good stock material, I intend on making it myself.
I've spent my money on trees instead of lessons.

I think there's more skill and artistic insight involved in polishing turds and making them into jewelry, than in buying jewelry and polishing them as if it's all your own doing. If you pick student that do the latter, you're not making artists, you're making production workers.

Troll food? Sure.

 

[MichaelS]

You can buy good stock material, I intend on making it myself.
I've spent my money on trees instead of lessons.

I think there's more skill and artistic insight involved in polishing turds and making them into jewelry, than in buying jewelry and polishing them as if it's all your own doing. If you pick student that do the latter, you're not making artists, you're making production workers.

Exactly...... Exactly

 

[Anthony]

hee hee , ha ha ha , seeds and raw clay here.
We can do all from scratch.
Very low cost factor and loving it.

Design is where it is, and that you have to pay for in $ and time.

The Internet is where you go for freebees.

And there were two Internets - Non-Visual at first , and later the'
Visual ---------- See the IBC for proof.
First you had to be able to express yourself clearly.
Then came the images and the quality of information actually went down.

As I have said before, we use the Ancient Chinese Scholar way,
to calm the mind, inspire and generate ideas.
Keeps the inventing going strong.
Good Day
Anthony

 

[jeanluc83]

I can see the spirit of where @Bananaman is coming from. If you want to make good bonsai start with good material. I think the place that the discussion gets bogged down is when he equates cost to quality but then says the opposite about education. It is equally true that you need a good education to make a good bonsai.

Another thing that hasn't entered into the discussion is that what Ryan is producing is entertainment. You may learn some thing here and there but at its core it is entertainment. It is similar to watching The New Yankee Workshop, or This Old House, or any of the cooking shows out there. Will watching Norm Abram build a writing desk make you a better wood working? Probably not but it might inspire you to do better. It might give you a few tricks that you never thought of. The only difference here is that Ryan is doing bonsai and that you are paying for the ability to watch the videos.

 

[rockm]

You can buy good stock material, I intend on making it myself.
I've spent my money on trees instead of lessons.

I think there's more skill and artistic insight involved in polishing turds and making them into jewelry, than in buying jewelry and polishing them as if it's all your own doing. If you pick student that do the latter, you're not making artists, you're making production workers.

Troll food? Sure.

Not true at all. Polishing a turd CAN be just polishing a turd for 25 years. Not more skill involved because generally, the turd tree you're working on (particularly vanilla nursery stock or walmart stuff) will not challenge you or push you much at all.

Collected stock and higher end purpose-grown stock present a vastly different set of challenges that require you to develop better skills to deal with them. Such stock, particularly collected trees, also present VASTLY steeper artistic and horticultural challenges than a $45 mugo pine or a $50 maple from Walmart or a nursery.

I spent 15 years working on crummy nursery and big box store trees. Those trees taught me a lot, but ALL of them never amounted to much, even after 15 years. I sold all of them off years ago. During that 15 years, I also started buying large collected stock. I found that working on those trees pushed me more and held me to a higher standard of care and capability. They taught me a lot more in a third the time than any of the nursery stock I'd been working on.

Better stock doesn't have to cost a freaking fortune. There is some spectacular collected stock out there that costs under $500 or even under $200 if you know where to look--(looking at you Zach, Andy and Alvaro ;-))

This tree started as $900 stock from Vito Megna two decades ago. It had only rudimentary branching and the apex was as thin as my ring finger. It has progressed pretty well and has challenged me along the way.

 

[substratum]

Here is what I did. I started with very young trees to make sure I could keep the species alive. I realized that I could. Then I bought better trees. I will likely purchase better stock from now on when I can get it. Now that I know what I'm doing. Plus if it's healthy already an established tree is easier to keep alive than a stick in a pot- usually. If I want to try a new species I may still start with a young tree to make sure I can keep it alive first.
This may be backward thinking but I don't want to spend $400 on a tree that I may not be able to keep alive. That is the most I've spent on a tree. I have also purchased some quality tools this year and a tool roll. So I'm in it now.

It’s not backward thinking. It’s responsible thinking. Makes perfect sense to me to work towards achieving skills using lower risk specimens. Isn’t that why most noobies are directed towards hearty and inexpensive stock, so little mistakes and inexperience don’t cost you hundreds of dollars?

In fact, if someone attempted to give me one of those $5-10K trees as a gift, I would not accept it, for fear that I’d let it die due to my inexperience and ignorance.

 

[Anthony]

Hmm, I do wonder if what Al is truly trying to find out,
is after loss of companionship/love, why all the bonsai,
the ornament,the exhibitions,the money spent,it all
seems pointless.

So you spend $300.00 a year, buy expensive starters,
pots, show off and then you are forgotten, unappreciated.
So what.
Good Day
Anthony

* By the way Al, having a banana is a medical problem,
length of a banana is something else.
By the way look up Chiquito.
It is a banana as well, a pink thong can easily cover that

 

[PeaceLoveBonsai]

Ryan (and/or his wife) has come up with a way to generate a ($300 /person X 100s of persons =) $300,000-ish annual cash flow into his business (if it is thousands of people ... !!).

You sponsored his apprenticeship with Kimura in one way or another.

Why are you attacking his revenue stream?

I don’t typically wade into these high waters, but I can’t let this one slip by...

300 x 100 is $30,000, not 300k. In this case and for this discussion, I think it’s a very important zero.

Based on the limited stuff I’ve seen, the production value of these streams is VERY high. Including Ryan, there seems to be at least 4 people running the stream (my sense is that these people don’t work for free.). Not to mention all the pre-production work and then the post production work to archive the stream. The preparation, week after week, to produce something like this is really amazing. And he is not getting a 300k revenue stream, it’s probably a third of that. All this to say, my sense is that he is probably losing money on this (or breaking even)...which goes to show, at least to me, that it’s done to progress bonsai in America and the world, more than to make a fortune. Everyone on this forum should be happy that people like Ryan (and Bjorn and others, for that matter) exist to advance the art we love so much. Not the least being one of the bonsai artist most responsible for Ryan’s start in Japan.

 

[Bananaman]

I can see the spirit of where @Bananaman is coming from. If you want to make good bonsai start with good material. I think the place that the discussion gets bogged down is when he equates cost to quality but then says the opposite about education. It is equally true that you need a good education to make a good bonsai.

Please quote any time I have said that Ryan is not worth the money. What I have said is that spending money on Ryan and continuing to work with crappy material seems counterproductive. There is also one thing that always seems to fly foul in the midst of all this talking exercise. I have yet to see anyone here take a 10.00 dollar juniper and turn it into anything remotely like a nice bonsai. Wired out in detail and branches placed just so. Why is that? In fact there should be at least two or three a week here. Anyone with some great bonsai skills can turn a 10.00 procumbens into something that could be put into a show pot and actually shown in an club exhibit in about four hours. ...and you don't need a 300.00 a year video from Ryan to do that.

Thats all I'm saying. Anyone that has the money and wishes to stream Ryan, be my guest. It's no peel off my banana.

 

[Anthony]

Al,

with all the research we did into Yi Xing clays/designs and so on,
take it from me, the effort put into design to produce the look
of some 300 + year old thingee.
Is not worth it.

Better to put the effort into inventing or a large Oil painting.

At least then the payback is better.

40 year old effort pushed to the max and the prize is what $5,000.00
US, or higher?
As one guy down here did it ------ 50 US $ every month for a tree cared
for - $600 a year and 10 years - $6,000.00
Show worthy after say 20 years - $12,000.00
Pot ordered from Yi Xing at least $5,000.00

Why waste your time on those petty prizes?

"Bonsai are the playthings of the Rich."
At least they can casually hire educated gardeners.

Storm in a teacup discussion.
Good Day
Anthony

once again home made pot - complete with pear skin finish.

 

[Vin]

Al,

with all the research we did into Yi Xing clays/designs and so on,
take it from me, the effort put into design to produce the look
of some 300 + year old thingee.
Is not worth it.

Better to put the effort into inventing or a large Oil painting.

At least then the payback is better.

40 year old effort pushed to the max and the prize is what $5,000.00
US, or higher?
As one guy down here did it ------ 50 US $ every month for a tree cared
for - $600 a year and 10 years - $6,000.00
Show worthy after say 20 years - $12,000.00
Pot ordered from Yi Xing at least $5,000.00

Why waste your time on those petty prizes?

"Bonsai are the playthings of the Rich."
At least they can casually hire educated gardeners.

Storm in a teacup discussion.
Good Day
Anthony

once again home made pot - complete with pear skin finish.

I'm not really sure what you just said but I feel like I need to take a bath.