Styling help

Jimmy1020

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Hi there,I'm just wanting some help/pointers with this juniper piece as I'm new to bonsai.
Does the shape ,proportion look right?

Jimmy
 

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0soyoung

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What you've made looks a bit like a pine tree. If that was your objective, you done well. Aside from that I've been flailing at styling trees for the better part of a decade now and I still struggle.

When I fist looked at your tree, two things caught my attention.
  1. The upper part and most part of the trunk is very straight
  2. The branches have an inconsistent 'sag'
Real tree branches tend to have some irregularity, but generally the lower branches droop more than the upper ones. In other words, I expect to see lower branches hand 'way down' the next ones up not so much, and so on, until wer reach the apex where the branching may be very upward. If this were exact, the tree would be very conical and actually not very interesting (unless does to such an extreme degree that it was 'incredible' = formal upright style). Too many of your branches don't fit this expectation, so they become attention getting. But there are simply too many exceptions, so it seems a little messy. Not bad, just a few little adjustments here and there would take care of it.

Most trees have rather straight trunks. Big forest conifers, if they have any movement at all, it is near the ground and the upper part is straight as an arrow and vertical. Your tree has some trunk movement low, near the ground and then is very straight, but slanting. It doesn't match my expectation, so it gets a lot of my attention, and I emotionally react that 'its not right', so it bothers me. At this point, you could prop up the right side of the pot until the straight upper trunk is vertical and I would be much more pleased with the trunk (later, when it is appropriate, you could repot the tree so it sits this way in the pot, if you agree).

So not bad a bad effort and one that can be much better, IMHO, with some small adjustments. The apex might be a bit heavy at this point, but I think it mostly needs some time to grow this next spring/summer before you worry much about it. Meanwhile, I recommend that you find another tree with different characteristics, maybe even a different species, and see what you can make of it. Try to make something different.

keep having fun 👍
 

Jimmy1020

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Thankyou so much for taking the time to give some feed back .

So pretty much what I got from you feed back is,
Let it grow this summer and repot it next spring but so the upper trunk is vertical and then address the overcrowded apex and branch angle as you mentioned.

What are your thoughts on style? And branch structure? Do you think I will need to loose some branches?
Thanks in advance
Jimmy
 

Shibui

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This tree looks quite sad. I think it is struggling to survive so please don't go playing with it now. Work out how to make it happy. Find the right location and amount of water, fert, etc so it will grow better.
When it is healthy and strong is the time to think about pruning and styling.
There are always options when styling a bonsai. You can have a 'full' tree with plenty of branches or you can have a more open trunk showing a struggle to survive in harsh conditions where the tree has fewer branches. This tree probably does have too many branches but while they are thin and weak they are feeding the tree. As the branches grow and get dense the foliage mass es will start to merge. That will be the time to think about reducing the number of branches.
 
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