Why yes! Mine is bigger than Adair's!

justBonsai

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It’s a lot more nerve wracking than anything else in bonsai for me. A branch will grow back. Once you grind that wood off, it’s gone forever.

Scott
Will Baddeley is doing another US tour in the coming months. Maybe have your club arrange a workshop if he's not stopping by the area already? Carving is a lot of fun but easy to mess up. Jeff at the Hidden Gardens gave me free reign to mess with one of their hornbeams. Had some success on the lower carving but botched the top. Should not have carved all the way through allowing light to pass through weakening the visual weight of the trunk. Thanks to the courtesy of @reddog I'll get another chance in may. I've sourced some huge oak trees that in my experience have a lot of deadwood and die back that should make for a fun project

1519696714566.png 1519696739930.png

Messed up here:

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markyscott

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Will Baddeley is doing another US tour in the coming months. Maybe have your club arrange a workshop if he's not stopping by the area already? Carving is a lot of fun but easy to mess up. Jeff at the Hidden Gardens gave me free reign to mess with one of their hornbeams. Had some success on the lower carving but botched the top. Should not have carved all the way through allowing light to pass through weakening the visual weight of the trunk. Thanks to the courtesy of @reddog I'll get another chance in may. I've sourced some huge oak trees that in my experience have a lot of deadwood and die back that should make for a fun project

View attachment 179533 View attachment 179534

Messed up here:

View attachment 179535

Already have! Will Baddeley will be in Houston on May 2 for a big club event. We’ve got some nice material for Will to dig into when he comes - an old collected Podocarpus.

FDDABDD7-DBA9-4540-B9CD-333044FF1C99.jpeg

Scott
 

justBonsai

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Already have! Will Baddeley will be in Houston on May 2 for a big club event. We’ve got some nice material for Will to dig into when he comes - an old collected Podocarpus.

View attachment 179536

Scott
Verrryyy nice. Huge podocarpus. Have you seen the Bonsai Taiwan Facebook or instagram pages? They specialize in large landscape and bonsai podocarpus and they all look amazing.
 

Brian Van Fleet

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It’s a lot more nerve wracking than anything else in bonsai for me. A branch will grow back. Once you grind that wood off, it’s gone forever.

Scott
So true. It took me years to steel myself to carve my big Juniper from Evergreen Gardenworks. But because of that, when I was finally ready, I was actually ready. Looking good Scott!
 

markyscott

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Verrryyy nice. Huge podocarpus. Have you seen the Bonsai Taiwan Facebook or instagram pages? They specialize in large landscape and bonsai podocarpus and they all look amazing.

I hadn’t, but I’ll definitely check it out.

S
 

markyscott

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Will Baddeley is doing another US tour in the coming months. Maybe have your club arrange a workshop if he's not stopping by the area already? Carving is a lot of fun but easy to mess up. Jeff at the Hidden Gardens gave me free reign to mess with one of their hornbeams. Had some success on the lower carving but botched the top. Should not have carved all the way through allowing light to pass through weakening the visual weight of the trunk. Thanks to the courtesy of @reddog I'll get another chance in may. I've sourced some huge oak trees that in my experience have a lot of deadwood and die back that should make for a fun project

View attachment 179533 View attachment 179534

Messed up here:

View attachment 179535

You’re fortunate to have material to practice on. The issue for me is I hardly have any material to carve. In fact, i just have this one tree. So there’s little opportunity to practice this technique except on this one thing I want to look good. I prefer to bring in someone I trust with enough experience to do it well. Danny is a very talented bonsai artist and has a sculptors eye when it comes to carving. He worked on it a full day last year and another full day yesterday. It was a massive job and he did it with a lot of care and consideration.

S
 

Adair M

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Happy spring! And it is still bigger than @Adair M ‘s olive.
View attachment 185805

S
Taller, maybe. Maybe.

It’s definately gnarlier than mine.

Your leaves are bigger.


I now have three versions of mine:

Papa Bear:

DD718DB7-4300-4B95-A53F-772949ED69F7.jpeg

Momma Bear:

E7C18AF4-9EA9-4AA0-80E4-84313FFE9F0D.jpeg

And Baby Bear:

688FDFC6-52E2-4A45-9CBE-99584B7E246B.jpeg


And for those who may be new to this thread, here is a picture of me with Papa Bear, just for size reference:

DB348038-CEE8-436A-95BC-8D519C093C1E.jpeg
 
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River's Edge

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Well see here, @Adair M . Now you've got everyone confused. Luckily, the when I was at Boon's we took a picture side-by-side so that we would have a fair comparison. Here it is:

View attachment 185911

S
All right you two younguns, both to the corner with your respective beverages. And do not come out until you need another one.
 
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