What are the rules/guidelines of bonsai design?

Smoke

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I seriously dont see anyone stirring anything on this site or thread. I dont know Will Heath from Adam---but the minute he posts anything whatsoever--someone finds a reason to get their knickers in a twist.

Will's posts are well thought out and backed with examples most of the time.

I am not pointing the finger at anyone in particular but how long are people gonna drag this crap out???
Did Will come and p*ss in all your trees??(that's called humor).

As far as the humourous posts go---bring em on!!! KK and greer's posts bring a little levity to the party.

People tell me Naka had a great sense of humor.

Bonsai doesnt have to dull and serious.

You are right. There is a lot of grey in this hobby. Trying so hard to make it black and white takes all the fun out of it.

Al
 

greerhw

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It's not the pot that concerns me, it's the POOP, stirring it stinks everthing up around here. Everybody keep posting your opinions, even the nonsence one's (KK and me). That's what makes it fun to come here. Every in once in a while you might actually learn something and that makes it all worthwhile, otherwise it's just for entertainment.

Harry
 

Smoke

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Bonsai has many attributes that one could call guidelines and could call rules.
I am more inclined to feel that those that feel the rules are to stifleing wish to consider them guidelines, but that is just my personal opinion. There are some very exacting rules in bonsai that must be followed or death will ensue. Cutting back hornbeam in the wrong time of the year and too close to an intersection will cause dieback that is irepairable. Defoliating a maple too late will cause the tree to not leaf and hold over till spring giving one a sense that they have killed the tree. Pinching juniper outside of the growing season can stall that foliage and it will not grow. It will stay green but will not bud back.

These are all rules. These are not guidelines and while engageing in an apprenticeship in Japan one will learn many "rules" that will go a long ways towards achieving great success in bonsai.

I might include these quotes from Kathy Shaner's diary of her apprenticeship in Japan...

Working on needle juniper:
"On the newer growth, that's still showing green wood, you can cut between the needles at any point and new buds will appear. Trim for shape, but for a better tree later, do not leave excessive length on the branch cut. It is better to cut short and encourage budding closer to the branch fork.

So one could choose the guideline that cutting between the needles will encourage back budding anywhere along the branch or...

... the rule that one should always cut back excessive length to encourage budding closer to the secondary branching to create better tertiary branching. I have many needle junipers, I always use the rule of cutting close.

This also from Kathy while in Japan working on Sugi (cryptomeria)

"Without thinkg about it, one hand was lightly laying against another branch pad that had already been worked on. Oyakata cautioned me. He showed me what had happened to the sugi he was working on. It was a tree someone else had worked on earlier. If you bend or cut or damage a needle at the tip of your cut, the branchlet will die back to the next intersection of branch. His tree was full of brown. I was far more cautious after that. I sure didn't want him using my tree for someone else's lesson."

This sounds an aweful lot like a rule to me. Lean on cut branches and the tree turns brown. Use it as a guideline and hopefully only half your tree will turn brown.

Rules in bonsai are not limited to first stylings. Cutting out a raw piece of material will always follow two or three or more "Rules". We might not even think about them as rules while useing them but as a matter of rote we will refer to them without thought.

Maybe a word that could be interchanged with both "rules" and "Guidelines" is the word PRINCIPLES.

Cheers, Al
 
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Vance Wood

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Will,
I would like to respectfully say that your response does not apply to what I asked in this thread. If you would like to discuss that please start another thread. If you would like to add any rules/guidelines that you follow as you create trees please feel free.

Thanks,
John

It's relevant, the rules are like driving instructions or battle plans. They all look good on paper until you hit the road or the first shot is fired. The idea that a tree must be pleasing to look at is the most important rule of them all. The so called rules only define already established artistic principles developed by some body in the past without the use of rules-----just a sense of what looks good and what does not.
 

aredsfan

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Al,

Did Kathy Shaner's diary get published? Is it available somewhere, thats some good information.

andrew
 

bwaynef

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BonsaiNut said:
Originally Posted by BonsaiNut View Post
Let's not talk about bonsai then Let's talk literature. While I agree that many of the best novels break many rules of grammar, where would we be if authors did not learn grammar first, BEFORE attempting to write?

Good point, however, one could argue that many of the greats did not bother to learn grammar at all.... ;) The break from the rules did not stop the masterpiece from becoming, so strict adherence to the rules is not mandatory for success.

Those that didn't bother to learn grammar, or whose grammar was atrocious generally had editors to clean things up before the finished product was presented to the unwitting public.

Poets get a little more leeway here, but then ...so do literati-styled trees.
 

Bonsai Nut

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Those that didn't bother to learn grammar, or whose grammar was atrocious generally had editors to clean things up before the finished product was presented to the unwitting public.

Poets get a little more leeway here, but then ...so do literati-styled trees.

I'm still not convinced :) Try telling a musician that he can just "play" and doesn't need to learn how to read music, how to properly keep time, how to tune his instrument... he will make noise, but is it music?
 
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There is a marked difference between technique and design. Let us not confuse the techniques of reading music with the freedom of varying from the written "guideline." Once the techniques are learned, than artistic freedom comes into play. However, design "guidelines" like those listed here, sway from technique and enter the realm of artistic suppression.

The horticultural rules of keeping a tree healthy and thriving have nothing at all to do with the actual design of the tree.

The guidelines discussed here lean more to the artistic application than horticultural technique. In example, root pruning has a base set of guidelines that must be followed, lest the tree dies, but the movement given a branch, as much as some would like, can not be nailed down so easily, in fact, this is up to the artist and only the end result will tell if it is successful.


And....we all know musicians who can read music and yet still can not play well. Learning the techniques does not guarantee a successful outcome, that requires talent, but we have been there before. ;)



Will
 
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bwaynef

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I'm still not convinced :) Try telling a musician that he can just "play" and doesn't need to learn how to read music, how to properly keep time, how to tune his instrument... he will make noise, but is it music?

If I understand what you're saying, ...I think we're arguing for the same cause.

Grammatically-unsound "greats" of the literary world didn't present their work (that thereby made them great) while it was still full of grammatical errors. It was cleaned up before presented to the masses.

It'd be kind of like someone w/ a good eye creating a virtual of a tree ...and a technician implementing the vision of the virt-artist. (There are holes in that, but you see what I'm saying.)


JohnG: I'm sorry I got involved in taking your thread off-course.
 

Vance Wood

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I'm still not convinced :) Try telling a musician that he can just "play" and doesn't need to learn how to read music, how to properly keep time, how to tune his instrument... he will make noise, but is it music?

Actually that's not a good comparison. Some very good musicians started out ignorant of the sciences of music, some could not even read music. The Beatles come to mind. Louis Armstrong.
 
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Grammatically-unsound "greats" of the literary world didn't present their work (that thereby made them great) while it was still full of grammatical errors. It was cleaned up before presented to the masses.

You miss the point made by Bnut, some of the great literary classic contain grammaticl errors, editors, cleaners, non-withstanding.

I can bear witness to the fact that many times, editors only make it worse. ;)

Will
 
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Vance Wood

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You have by now received a pretty good and lengthy list of the "Rules" of bonsai. You now need to ask yourself why we have these "Rules" and how did they come about? That is the more significant question.

The so called rules are nothing more than the analysis of good results by those seeking to emulate the same, from those artists that did what they did from the heart, and in doing so touched the hearts of those who looked on in wonder at what they accomplished. There are those who go out in the world and discover mathematical principals, engineering principals, medical principals and artistic principals. Their results are so profound and all encompassing that the rest of us look on these developments as something to be copied and emulated. Why do you think the axioms of geometry are often called the Pythagorean theorems, medicine;the Hippocratic oath. The list is long if you care to look. Somewhere long ago some forgotten Japanese master took the work of some forgotten Chinese master and made a potted tree that started the current trend we now know as bonsai. The so called rules are nothing more than a description of the successful work of others. Then of course there are the laws Newton discovered. All of these people knew where they wanted to go but did not know how to get there; so they made a way.
 
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